In July 2009 the Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology will be held in Beijing. Oryx has a history of publishing conservation research carried out in China and, to mark the meeting, we have brought together in this issue a range of articles on aspects of conservation in China. We have also solicited two perspective articles, on conservation of bats in China (pp. 179–182; to tie in with a global review of bats as bushmeat published in this issue, pp. 217–234) and on that perennial global symbol of conservation, the giant panda (pp. 176–178).