Due to the inherent disadvantage of heat transfer， the traditional water bath pasteurization technology may lead to excessive heating of fresh-cut Chaenomeles sinensis slices， resulting in serious deterioration of flavor quality. Radio frequency (RF) combined hot water bath pasteurization， which can improve the heating efficiency and uniformity through volumetric heating for the food， thus reducing the heat resistance of microorganisms and inactivation time and can effectively minimize the adverse effects of heat transfer on heat-sensitive components such as flavor， nutrition， and colors of the fruit slices. In this study， E. coli was selected as the target microorganism to assess the impact of different RF electrode gaps on the heating characteristics and pasteurization efficiency of inoculated E. coli fruit slices. The inactivation kinetics of RF combined hot water bath pasteurization were fitted using Linear， Weibull， and Log-logistic models. The results revealed that RF combined hot water bath heating significantly increased the heating rate of Chaenomeles sinensis slices and reduced the heat resistance of E. coli and inactivation time compared with water bath pasteurization， when employing 100 mm electrode gaps， RF combined hot water bath pasteurization reduced the inactivation time by approximately 57% (lethality>5 lg). Compared the fit evaluation parameters Af， Bf， RMSE， and R2 of the inactivation kinetic model， the Log-logistic model exhibited the highest fitting accuracy (Af: 1.0884， Bf: 0.9334， RMSE: 0.1189， R2: 0.9931). Furthermore， the predicted values of the Log-logistic model closely aligned with the measured values， confirming that the Log-logistic model provided a more accurate representation of the inactivation pattern of E. coli inoculated in fresh-cut Chaenomeles sinensis slices during RF combined hot water bath pasteurization. Results suggested that RF combined hot water bath pasteurization can be considered as an effective pasteurization method for fresh-cut Chaenomeles sinensis slices.