China has a long history of tea plant breeding and a solid research foundation as the origin of tea plants and a major tea producing country in the world.Clonal tea cultivars and vegetative propagation techniques first appeared in China，and China has bred the largest number of tea cultivars in the world.The researches on the genetics and breeding of tea plants in China have accelerated after the reform and opening up.After entering the 21st century，it has achieved good results in many fields including the number and diversity of cultivars bred，breeding technology，and basic theory of breeding，especially in the fields of tea whole genome sequencing and assembly，functional genomics and other fields，leading the world and strongly supporting the high-quality development of tea industry in China.This article reviews the history and achievements of researches on the genetics and breeding of tea plants in China，and sorts out the problems existing in the genetic rules of the main characters of tea plants，breeding techniques，and innovation of breakthrough varieties.In view of these problems，some priorities of researches on the innovation of basic theories of genetics and breeding，breeding technology and cultivar in the future are put forward.It will provide valuable reference for further studies on the genetics and breeding of tea plants.