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This study explores Chinese learners’ use of English passive voice through a comparative analysis of two learner corpora(ICLE_Ch and LOCNESS) and a reference corpus(BNC 2014). By analyzing the frequency of English passive constructions, syntactic errors, semantic prosodies, and over-passivization, this study reveals significant differences between Chinese learners and native English speakers. The findings show that Chinese learners use the passive voice less, associate it with more negative connotations, and make more syntactic errors, especially in agreement and passive participle formation. This study also found that Chinese learners tend to overuse the passive voice, especially with inanimate subjects. These differences are attributed to differences in Chinese and English syntax and semantico-pragmatics. This study infers the pedagogical implications that Chinese students should be encouraged to use more passive constructions in their English writings when necessary and to pay attention to the rules of tense and subject-verb agreement and passive participle formation. They should also be taught to avoid excessive passivization and the tendency to link English passives to negative semantic prosody.