An experimental study of particulate matter emissions was conducted on a Direct Injection Gasoline (DIG) engine produced by a Chinese Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to investigate the impacts of fuel properties from China market on particulate emissions of modern gasoline vehicles. The emissions include both the primary emissions and the secondary ones in the atmosphere. The objective of this work is to provide some experimental data and analysis on the impacts of fuel properties and vehicle technologies on Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM2.5) in China. On the basis of better understanding of those impacts, it is desired to provide some suggestions and guidelines on how to improve fuel quality and vehicle technology to help effectively reduce air pollution in China. In this paper, six test fuels with different aromatics, olefin, sulfur, Methyl-cyclopentadienyl Manganese Tricarbonyl (MMT), ethanol content were blended and tested to research on the influences on primary particulate emission including mass, number, size distribution and compounds including Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the toxicity of PAHs emissions. The test results demonstrated that the fuel compositions impacted significantly on particulate emissions of DIG engine. Higher aromatics in gasoline resulted in much higher Particle Mass (PM), Particle Number (PN) and PAHs emission and much higher toxicity to human health. Reducing olefin content in gasoline showed benefits to a certain degree on reducing PM and PN emission especially under high load engine operation conditions, and did not show obvious improvement of PAHs emission factor, but reduced the toxicity of PAHs. 10% of Ethanol in gasoline showed limited improvement on particulate emissions comparing with the effect of reducing aromatics and olefin content in gasoline, moreover E10 increased PN emission under low load conditions. The test results also demonstrated that the typical China Phase V gasoline did not show benefits of reducing vehicle emissions the typical Phase IV gasoline with higher sulfur (<=50 ppm) and manganese (<=8 mg Mn/l) in China market. The particulate compounds of DIG engine mainly consisted Elemental Carbon (EC), Organic Matter (OM) and small amount of inorganic ions. The mass percentage of EC in total PM increased as the load of engine rose. Three-way Catalyst (TWC) is more effective in reducing OM than EC, with the overall OM reduction rate of 67-85%. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.