Abstract: Shanghai Soft X-ray Free Electron Laser (SXFEL) requires a beam position monitor system with resolution of sub-micron, so the beam based alignment (BBA) method to achieve close coincidence of the electron beam and the photon beam in the undulator section can be used. A cavity beam position monitor (CBPM) system consisting of a C-band cavity probe, a RF front-end and a dedicated digital beam position monitor processor (DBPM) was developed. The system design, hardware and software structure, and system construction were introduced in this paper. Based on the three adjacent CBPM systems in the drift section, the online system performance evaluation was completed. And the experiment results show that the position resolution of 880 nm is obtained under the condition of the bunch charge of 500 pC and the dynamic range of the system of ±800 μm. This is also the first CBPM system with submicron position resolution that can be run online in China. In addition, the phase cavity of CBPM was used to measure the relative charge and the arrival time of the bunch. The evaluation results show that the performance is better than the design requirements of SXFEL.