Tropical China covers a land area of about 48 million ha. In olden times it was extensively covered with dense natural forests. However, the dual pressures from commercial exploitation and rapid expansion of the population led to the reduction of the total area of natural forests to less than 2 million ha at present from 3.85 million ha in the end of the 1940s resulting in the degradation of the forest lands. It is roughly estimated that at least more than half of the forest lands are degraded. During the past four decades, great efforts were made to rehabilitate the degraded lands through mass afforestation/reforestation programs. Meanwhile, many research projects designed to study plantation establishment technology were carried out, including : transformation of coastal sandy wastelands, improvement of degraded and inferior forest stands, establishment of fast-growing and high-yielding short rotation plantations on flat and hilly lowlands, reforestation of degraded mountainous rainforest lands and afforestation of eroded barren lands. Based on a preliminary survey of the literature, this paper describes the technical approaches and research achievements of these projects. The future prospects and research needs for the rehabilitation of degraded forest lands in Tropical China are also outlined.