(Osteichthyes: Perciformes: Percoidei), which consists of about 133 species in 34 genera, are widely distributed in tropical and temperate coastal waters in Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. They play an important role in worldwide marine fishery resources. Much more progress has been made on taxonomy and phylogeny of sparid fish. However, there still exist a lot of taxonomic problems in the subfamily, generic and species levels. The purposes of the present paper are: (1) providing a concise review of the progress currently made worldwide on taxonomy and phylogeny of sparid fish, and (2) presenting a checklist of Chinese species of Sparidae based on currently-known literature records. Additionally, some taxonomic problems with Chinese species of Sparidae and further studies needed to address these problems were also discussed in this paper.