This paper reports the control method for the core power of the China initiative Accelerator DrivenSystem (CiADS) facility. In the CiADS facility, an intense external neutron source provided by a protonaccelerator coupled to a spallation target is used to drive a sub-critical reactor. Without any control rodinside the sub-critical reactor, the core power is controlled by adjusting the proton beam intensity. Inorder to continuously change the beam intensity, an adjustable aperture is considered to be used at theLow Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) line of the accelerator. The aperture size is adjusted based on theProportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers, by comparing either the setting beam intensity or thesetting core power with the measured value. To evaluate the proposed control method, a CiADS coremodel is built based on the point reactor kinetics model with six delayed neutron groups. The simulations based on the CiADS core model have indicated that the core power can be controlled stably byadjusting the aperture size. The response time in the adjustment of the core power depends mainly onthe adjustment time of the beam intensity