Verstappen aced his getaway from pole and gapped the field by around a second a lap in the opening six laps to put his victory bid beyond doubt.
His only challenge came shortly before half distance during a series of closely linked safety car interruptions that forced him to change strategy.
The first safety car was deployed on lap 23 to collect Valtteri Bottas’s stopped Sauber, which had ground to a halt at turn 11 and was stuck in gear.
The prospect of a cheap pit stop enticed half the grid back into pit lane for fresh rubber in the hope the hard compound could be massaged to the end of the race on lap 56, and Red Bull Racing was forced to follow suit.
What little jeopardy there was in the long final stint evaporated shortly before the race got back underway on lap 27 when Lance Stroll clouted into the back of Daniel Ricciardo’s RB car at the final hairpin.
The field had been bunching up behind Verstappen as the Dutchman readied himself to resume the race. Stroll, apparently paying insufficient attention to the concertinaing pack, ploughed so hard into the back of Ricciardo’s car that the Australian got momentarily airborne, clattering into compatriot Oscar Piastri as he landed.
Piastri’s car was damaged but able to continue, while Stroll had to pit for repairs.
Ricciardo attempted to continue in the race, but his diffuser was too badly damaged, and he was forced to retire.
Stroll was penalised 10 seconds for the crash.
It was a dreadful half-minute for the RB team, with Yuki Tsunoda being taken out of the race by an overly ambitious Kevin Magnussen, who dived down the inside of turn 6 but made heavy contact with the rival car.
Tsunoda’s right-rear corner was damaged beyond salvaging, forcing him to stop by the side of the road. Magnussen continued with a 10-second penalty.
The carnage forced the race back behind the safety car until lap 32, by which time the chequered flag was comfortably within range of the hard tyre, allowing Verstappen to cruise to the finish line with an easy 13.7-second advantage.
“It felt amazing,” Verstappen said. “All weekend I think we were incredibly quick.
“You had a car was basically on rails, and I could do whatever I wanted to with it.
“Those kinds of weekends are amazing to feel, and to achieve basically what we did this weekend is fantastic.”
Lando Norris impressed for McLaren with a strong second place, lapping quickly enough to keep Sergio Pérez in the sister Red Bull Racing car at bay for the entire second half of the race.
Norris had got lucky with the timing of Bottas’s stoppage, which was initially dealt with by a virtual safety car. He took the opportunity to make a cheap stop, and when the rest of the leaders pitted behind the safety car, he found himself elevated into podium contention.
But luck was only half the task, with Norris finding a sublime rhythm around the Shanghai circuit to earn McLaren’s best finish of the season and defy expectations.
“I’m very happy for the whole team, they deserved it,” he said. “It just today worked out, I don’t know why.
“I really wasn’t expecting it to be the kind of race we had today, but I got comfortable, could manage the tyres a lot… and I could just push.
“Good day, good points and another podium, so I’m very happy.”
Pérez had a less straightforward race than Verstappen, having to recapture second place off the line from a fast-starting Fernando Alonso and then losing two places behind the safety car.
While Charles Leclerc was easy enough for him to deal with, he had no pace to run with Norris, lamenting that he’d used the best of his rubber too early in the stint.
“I don’t know how many laps we ended up fighting between Charles and myself,” he said. “You use so much of your tyre, you put so much energy into them that they never really come back.
“I paid the price, but that was the only way I could get by Charles.”
Leclerc finished fourth but was frustrated to find his Ferrari was uncompetitive in the second half of the race on the hard tyre, having expected to contend for the podium after the opening stints. His teammate, Carlos Sainz, finished behind him in fifth with the same issue.
George Russell was sixth on a day of damage limitation for Mercedes, just fending off Fernando Alonso in the final laps despite the Spaniard being forced to make three stops by the timing of the safety car.
Oscar Piastri limped to the flag in eighth ahead of Lewis Hamilton, who was up from 18th thanks in part to a second pit stop that pre-empted the safety car, while Nico Hülkenberg scored the final point of the race for Haas in 10th.