Abstract: The bear is the greatest animal of terrestrial Carnivora. Formerly, the bears had more widespread distributions in forest regions of China and were more common during the fourth and the fifth decades of this century. But today the bears are rare, reduced both in number and range of distribution in our country, because of the overhunting and the destruction of their habitats.Nowadays, there are three species and nine subspecies of bears in China.1 Brown bear Ursus arctos Linnaeus, 1758There are three subspecies of the brown bear in China. Ursus arctos Isabellinus (Horsfield, 1826) Ursus arctos pruinosus (Blyth, 1853) Ursus arctos lasiotus (Gray, 1867)2 Black bear Selenarctos thibetanus G.Cuvier, 1823 There are five subspecies of the black bear in China Selenartos thibetanus thibetanus (G.Cuvier, 1823) Selenartos thibetanus laniger Pocock, 1932 Selenartos thibetanus mupinensis (Heude, 1901) Selenartos thibetanus formosanus (Swinhoe, 1864) Selenartos thibetanus ussuricus (Heude, 1901)3 Malayan sun bear Helarctos malayanus Raffles, 1822 Helarctos malayanus wardi (Lydekker, 1906)The geographical distributions are given in the map.Some species or subspecies of the above bears should be given legal protection and scientific management in our country.This work is already in progress, though very slow.

摘要： 熊是大型兽类,历史上人类与熊的关系很密切,我国劳动人民对熊的认识和猎取利用具有悠久的历史。然而,采用近代动物分类学方法研究我国熊类的,最初还是一些外国人。1853年,Blyth根据得自我国西藏拉萨的棕熊标本命名为Ursus< pruinosus,Swinhoe(1864)将台湾的熊标本订名为Ursvs formosanus,Gray(1867)则依据一个活的由我国北部运到英国伦敦动物学会公园的棕熊订名为Ursus lasiotus,后来,Heude(1901)，Pocock(1914，1932,1941 Sowerby (1920，1923) Howell (1928，1929)，Allen ( 1929,1938 ) , Schwarz ( 1940)等人相继对我国的熊进行了研究。由于他们多依据个别标本订名，现在看来所发表的许多种实际上并不存在或仅是亚种，而绝大多数亚种则是某一亚种的同物异名，因而，也给我国熊的分类带来某些混乱。