The single-phase La 2 (CO 3 ) 3 Á3.4H 2 O with the orthorhombic type was synthesized by hydrothermal method. The results characterized by XRD, FTIR and DTA-TG showed that the thermal decompositions of La 2 (CO 3 ) 3 Á3.4H 2 O below 1,273 K experience four steps, which involve a two-stage dehydration and formation of anhydrous La 2 (CO 3 ) 3 at first, and then the formation of La 2 O 2 CO 3 and La 2 O 3 , respectively. An additional intermediate product assigned to La 2 O(CO 3 ) 2 was observed in the third step. Thermal decomposition kinetics of La 2 (CO 3 ) 3 to La 2 O 2 CO 3 was investigated under nonisothermal conditions. The dependence of the activation energy on the reaction degree was estimated by Ozawa and Friedman isoconversional methods, which confirm that the step is a multistage kinetic process. The reaction mechanism determined by a multivariate nonlinear regression program is a kind of two-stage consecutive reaction (A n -A n model), f(a) = n(ln(1 -a (1 -1/n) )(1 -a)). The first stage: E = 435 ± 9 kJ mol -1 , lg A = 28.7 ± 0.8, Dimension1 = 0.28; the second stage: E = 234 ± 4 kJ mol -1 , lg A = 13.5 ± 0.3, Dimension2 = 1.22.