We show in this article that Kähler hyperbolic manifolds satisfy a family of sharp Chern number inequalities and the equality cases can be attained by the compact quotients of the unit balls in the complex Euclidean spaces. These present restrictions to complex structures on negatively curved compact Kähler manifolds, thus providing evidence to the rigidity conjecture of S.-T. Yau. The main ingredients in our proof are Gromov's results on the L 2 -Hodge numbers, the −1-phenomenon of the χy-genus and Hirzebruch's proportionality principle. Similar methods can be applied to obtain parallel results on Kähler non-elliptic manifolds. In addition to these, we term a condition called "Kähler exactness", which includes Kähler hyperbolic and non-elliptic manifolds and has been used by B.-L. Chen and X. Yang in their work, and show that the canonical bundle of a general type Kähler exact manifold is ample. Some of its consequences and remarks are discussed as well.2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 32Q45, 57R20, 58J20.