Plant science in China has been developing rapidly in 2013. Chinese scientists have contributed major advances in a range of fields, such as the mechanism of strigolactone signaling transduction in the regulation of rice architecture, the genetic basis of rice male sterility, the genomic analysis of important crops, the structural insight into plant innate immune, and the environmental biology. Here, we provide an overall picture of China’s progress in plant research and highlight some of the important findings in 2013.