Auditory brainstem response (ABR) technic has been widely used to study hearing ability in fishes. In contrast to the behavior and traditional electrophysiology methods, this approach provides the following advantages: (1) there is no harm to the animals because it is non-invasive; (2) hearing sensitivity in untrained fish can be determined rapidly; (3) individuals are reusable. Using ABR approach, auditory evoked potentials of 10 Chinese suckers were recorded using two subcutaneous electrodes. We found that the fish can detected tone bursts from 100 to 5 000 Hz. The results showed the best hearing between 100 to 2 000 Hz, and the lowest threshold was 69.8 dB at 800 Hz. There was a positive correlation between the amplitude of the ABR waveform and the stimulus intensity, while there was a negative correlation between latency and stimulus intensity. Threshold values from 10 individuals were averaged to produce audiogram. Similarly to the most audiograms, it is a U-shape with thresholds increasing at both high and low frequency limits of hearing. The results have an important significance in protecting Chinese sucker and providing supporting data for access the effect of noise on fishes.