[1] In north China, most earthquakes occur at depths of 10-25 km and are considered to be the direct result of deformation or rupture of the brittle upper crustal layer. To describe this mechanism, a planar horizontal negative dislocation plane is used to represent the force of action of the lower crustal layer on an overlying brittle upper crust layer. An area around Beijing in north China has been chosen for applying this negative dislocation layer assumption. A GPS network (Capital Circle GPS Network, CCGN), has been set up for monitoring crust deformations since 1992. In this paper, observations from 1992, 1995, and 1996 GPS surveying campaigns were used to determine model parameters of a negative dislocation layer. Using a Bayesian inversion procedure, more than 95% of data residuals are found to be<2mm/yr, indicating that the negative dislocation layer model can fit GPS data well. The inversion results show that the local tectonic movement is 2