Clindamycin causes cutaneous adverse drug reactions (cADRs), sometimes with the mechanisms of pathogenicity or risk factors unknown. This study aims to assess whether HLA alleles are associated with clindamycin-related cADRs in the Han Chinese population. We performed an association study of 12 subjects with clindamycin-related cADRs, 279 controls and 26 clindamycin-tolerant subjects. Subjects who received clindamycin through intravenous drip were analyzed separately. Unbiased, in silico docking was conducted. We found 6 out of 12 clindamycin-induced cADR patients carried HLA-B*51:01, and all of them received clindamycin via intravenous drip (6/9). The carrier frequency of HLA-B*51:01 is significantly higher compared with the control group (P=0.0006; OR=9.731, 95% CI: 2.927-32.353) and the clindamycin-tolerant group (OR=24.000, 95% CI: 3.247-177.405). In silico docking showed clindamycin is potentially more stable inside HLA-B*51:01 protein. Our results suggested, for the first time, that HLA-B*51:01 is a risk allele for clindamycin-related cADRs in Han Chinese, especially when clindamycin is administered via intravenous drip.