Economic transformation and sustainable development in resources-based cities have been popular in research since the 20th century. China has lots of resources-based cities, it is vital to explore the path to upgrading economic transformation. This paper, reviews the policy settings, transformation achievement and issues in economic transformation and upgrade in China's resources-based cities, such as lagging alternative industry development, extensive resources processing and deviated execution of policy. This paper analyzes resources allocation, scientific innovation, and administrative adjustment and their mechanism from the bottlenecks of economic growth in resources-based cities, and establishes a theoretical framework of economic transformation upgrade in resources-based cities, and presents paths to upgrading economic transformation for resources-based cities, aiming at offering references for sustainable development of China's resources-based cities.