This study evaluates simulations of the interannual variations of the East Asian Winter Monsoon (EAWM) in four general circulation models (GCMs) that participated in the Couple Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5). The results indicate that all models can reasonably reproduce the high-and low-level circulation fields including the Siberian High (SH), Aleutian low, near surface wind and mid-to upper-level East Asian (EA) major trough, and upper-tropospheric EA jet. The interannual variability modes are identified by performing separate empirical orthogonal Function (EOF) analyses of the temperature 2 m over the northern domain (30°N-60°N, 100°E-140°E) and the southern domain (0°-30°N, 100°E-140°E). For the northern mode, all four models effectively capture the spatial features. However, only the Beijing Normal University-Earth System Model(BNU-ESM) reasonably simulates the temporal characteristics; the first principalcomponent (PC1) correlation coefficient between the BNU-ESM and National Centers for Environmental Prediction/U.S. Department of Energy Reanalysis Ⅱ (NCEP-DOE Ⅱ) is 0.69. For the southern mode, the first two EOF modes in all models correlate strongly with the observed first leading EOF mode (EOF1), which indicates that the simulated first two modes together explain the observed characteristics of the first mode. The general skills of the grid-point version 2 Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System model (FGOALS-g2), the version 2 FGOALS spectral model (FGOALS-s2), and BNU-ESM in the simulation of the southern modes are high, which is mainly attributed to the successful simulation of the Philippine Sea anticyclone associated with El Ni?o forcing. However, version 1.1 of the BeijingClimate Center Climate System Model (BCC-CSM1-1) fails to capture the interannual variations of the southern mode and the Philippine Sea anticyclone. Both the observation and the simulations show that the northern mode correlates significantly with Arctic Oscillation (AO).