 This species was first named by Lü & Yuan in 2005 as the type species of a new genus, which they named "Huaxiapterus".Two later studies in 2007 and 2011 both showed that "H. jii" was in fact more closely related to "Sinopterus" than to two other species also assigned to "Huaxiapterus", ""H."" "corollatus" and ""H."" "benxiensis".Both groups of researchers concluded that "Huaxiapterus jii" should therefore be reclassified as "Sinopterus jii", and that the other two species of ""Huaxiapterus"" require a new genus name.