The effect of high performance polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) fibers(E≥40 GPa) on the plastic and early hardening shrinkage cracking of cement based materials was studied systematically. The experimental results show that weighted values of the cracking reduce with the increase of the fiber content and length. In the plastic stage, fiber with smaller diameters has a significant influence on the cracking effect while fiber with a higher elastic modulus performs better in the early hardening shrinkage stage. In addition, the crack reduction rate by PVA fiber is much higher than that of polypropylene(PP) fiber on hardening shrinkage cracking under the same conditions.