Circular intuitionistic fuzzy sets are further extensions of intuitionistic fuzzy sets with a stronger ability to express uncertain information than intuitionistic fuzzy sets. This paper firstly defines a new distance measure for circular intuitionistic fuzzy sets based on the theory of circular intuitionistic fuzzy sets, considering the information of four aspects: membership degree, non-membership degree, radius and the assignment of hesitation degree, and proves that the new distance satisfies the distance measure conditions. Secondly, by constructing a manual testing framework, the new distance is analyzed in comparison with the existing distance metric to show the rationality of the new method. Finally, the method is applied to fuzzy multi-criteria decision making to further demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of the method.