A preliminary study of the syntactic characteristics of the imperative construction in modern Chinese is presented. The term "imperative" is used to refer to the type of syntactic construction which is marked by an implicit or explicit second person subject, and which expresses a direct command. Indirect or implied commands expressed by a declarative statement or a rhetorical question are not included. It is concluded that the imperative in Chinese is a complex, embedded sentence in the deep structure, consisting of a matrix sentence with a (+2nd person) pronoun as subject, the verb YAO1, YAO2, YONG; ZHUN, etc. as the imperative main verb, and a complement sentence with also a (+2nd person) pronoun subject. The verb phrase which appears in the surface structure is derived from the complement sentence in the deep structure. The subject of this complement sentence is obligatorily deleted in the surface structure. Some of the structural restrictions of the imperative are described, and a list of references concludes the paper. (PP)