As a crucial component of the livestock sector, beef cattle industry in China plays a key role in ensuring animal protein supply and promoting rural revitalization. However, its development has long lagged behind other livestock industries. Since the beginning of the 21st century, beef consumption demand has continued to grow, reaching 7.5 kg per capita annually in 2024. Yet, domestic supply capacity remains insufficient, leading to a rising import dependency rate of 36.8%. The industry faces structural challenges, including low production efficiency, slow progress in scaling up operations, and weak international competitiveness, ranking only 34th globally in 2023. Historically, the industry has evolved through stages such as transitioning from draft to meat purposes, breakthroughs in improved breeding technologies, and the refinement of policy support systems. However, its development has been constrained by factors like the crowding-out effect of agricultural mechanization, resource limitations, and cost imbalances in small-scale farming models, resulting in slow growth. The regional industrial layout shows a shift from traditional central production areas to regions with comparative resource advantages. For future high-quality development, it is essential to optimize regional layouts based on resource endowments and establish a "breeding-fattening" division system along the Hu Line. Efforts should focus on cultivating diversified business entities, retaining and empowering small-scale farmers, promoting integrated crop-livestock circular models, strengthening improved breeding and technological innovation, fostering differentiated and branded upgrades of the industry chain, and tapping into the potential of hilly and mountainous areas in southern China. Additionally, establishing a long-term policy support system is necessary to address the industry's long cycles and high risks, thereby achieving supply security and enhancing competitiveness.