High‐tension multiannealing (HTMA) was applied to improve the tensile properties of poly(p‐phenylene sulfide) fibers, which was furthermore applied to the fibers produced and improved with the zone‐drawing and zone‐annealing treatments. The HTMA treatment was repeatedly applied to the fibers under the conditions of a 250°C temperature and an applied tension of between 201.0 and 188.0 MPa. As a result, at the 13th treatment the degree of crystallinity increased to 40%. On the other hand, the orientation factor of crystallites increased dramatically to 0.982 during the zone‐drawing treatment, but increased only slightly during the subsequent treatments of zone annealing and HTMA. The finally obtained fiber had a tensile modulus of 10.4 GPa and a tensile strength of 0.73 GPa. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 75: 1569–1576, 2000