Abstract: During the last decade abundant Mesozoic fossil insects have been collected from China. More than 100 papers and monographs, most of them focused on taxonomy, have been published. In this paper the history, current status and some problems on the taxonomic researches of Mesozoic fossil insects are reviewed briefly. The important results achieved by the Chinese palaeoentomologists on biodiversity, internal morphology, phylogeny of Raphidioptera, biogeography, biostratigraphy, ecostratigraphy, co-evolution between pollinating insects and angiosperms are introduced. The table of the oldest insect families in the world found from China is given. The alimentary canal of fossil stick insects from Liaoning Late Jurassic rocks are the first authenticated records of internal anatomy in Palaeoentomological history. It was in 1994 that the cladistic method was first used to study familial phylogeny of fossil and living snake flies in China. The first non-marine ecostratigraphic research was made in dividing Late Mesozoic strata of Fengning, Hebei Province, and revealed a general pattern of basin evolution which appears in many other sections of Northeast China. The fossil anthophilous brachycera found from the Yixian Formation of Western Liaoning demonstrated that the flowers were in existence in Late Jurassic and represented by at least two different types of flowers. The East Asia, especially Northeast China, is one of the origin places of angiosperms.

Key words: fossil insects, Mesozoic, China