The study of fish disease in China was begun in 1953 and was mainly in the field of freshwater fish. More one hundred kinds of diseases have been found including the pathogens of virus, bacteria, fungi, protozoan, worms, crustaceans, algae and larvae of mollusks. Besides, some kinds of diseases were caused by non-living factors. Grass carp (Ctenopharynogodon idellus), black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus), silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), and bighead carp (Aristichthys nobilis) were very important economic freshwater fish in China. Among them, grass carp is the most susceptible to various pathogens and has high mortality, especially for the fingerling. So far, most of the fish diseases in China can be basically controlled in the pond, but control them in the large scales of water are still problem in further research. Extensive works were carried out for the investigation of fish diseases and causative pathogenic fauna and flora from various ponds and lakes as well as rivers in China. Besides virus and bacteria, more than 1300 species of fish parasites have been found. Many of them were established in new genera and species of new records in China.

Due to the cultivation of shrimps, mollusks and marine fish were developed rapidly after 1980, the research of diseases on these aquatic organisms were begun gradually. But study in these fields in China was much less than those to the freshwater fish at present. The studies on the diseases of coldwater salmon fish were carried out beginning in the recent few years.