BACKGROUND: Cancers from lung and esophagus are the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in China and share many similarities in terms of histological type, risk factors and genetic variants. Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in Chinese esophageal cancer patients have demonstrated six high-risk candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Thus, the present study aimed to determine the risk of these SNPs predisposing to lung cancer in Chinese population. METHODS: A total of 1170 lung cancer patients and 1530 normal subjects were enrolled in this study from high-incidence areas for esophageal cancer in Henan, northern China. Five milliliters of blood were collected from all subjects for genotyping. Genotyping of 20 high-risk SNP loci identified from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on esophageal, lung and gastric cancers was performed using TaqMan allelic discrimination assays. Polymorphisms were examined for deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) using Х2 test. Bonferroni correction was performed to correct the statistical significance of 20 SNPs with the risk of lung cancer. The Pearson's Х2 test was used to compare the distributions of gender, TNM stage, histopathological type, smoking and family history by lung susceptibility genotypes. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses were carried out to evaluate the associations between genetic variants and overall survival. RESULTS: Four of the 20 SNPs identified as high-risk SNPs in Chinese esophageal cancer showed increased risk for Chinese lung cancer, which included rs3769823 (OR = 1.26; 95% CI = 1.107-1.509; P = 0.02), rs10931936 (OR = 1.283; 95% CI = 1.100-1.495; P = 0.04), rs2244438 (OR = 1.294; 95% CI = 1.098-1.525; P = 0.04) and rs13016963 (OR = 1.268; 95% CI = 1.089-1.447; P = 0.04). All these SNPs were located at 2q33 region harboringgenes of CASP8, ALS2CR12 and TRAK2. However, none of these susceptibility SNPs was observed to be significantly associated with gender, TNM stage, histopathological type, smoking, family history and overall survival. CONCLUSIONS: The present study identified four high-risk SNPs at 2q33 locus for Chinese lung cancer and demonstrated the shared susceptibility loci at 2q33 region for Chinese lung and esophageal cancers.