The present invention provides a manual stair climbing wheel chair. The wheel chair comprises a hand crank handle, seat reclining devices, a gear box and a driven sprocket wheel set. When the seat of the wheel chair is reclined by using the seat reclining devices, the front and rear wheels of the wheel chair are only driven by the gear box through the driven sprocket wheel set, and cannot be pushed or propelled by hands; the person propelling the wheel chair can drive the front and rear wheels only by rotating the hand crank handle, so that self-slippage of the wheel chair can be avoided when moving up and down on stairs.