The aquatic breeding is the basis for the development of aquaculture, serving as a strategic and fundamental core industry of fisheries, and essential for sustainable, healthy and environmentally friendly aquaculture development. With the development of globalization and marketization of the aquaculture industry, China's aquaculture seed industry is facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. Along with rapid development of biotechnologies, aquaculture genetic breeding has transformed from traditional selection breeding and hybrid breeding to cell engineering breeding, marker-assisted selection breeding, genome-wide genotyping-based selective breeding, molecular design breeding and genome editing breeding. Advances in basic research and biotechnology of aquaculture genetic breeding have promoted the development of aquaculture seed industry in China. Till 2022, 266 newly bred aquaculture varieties were approved by the National Certification Committee for Aquatic Varieties and announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China. Among them, common carp (Cyprinus carpio) occupies the top position with 31 new varieties, indicating great achievements in common carp breeding. In this paper, the current status of common carp breeding in China is summarized, along with its germplasm and genomic resources. Additionally, the foundation of molecular breeding is briefly reviewed, along with the research status of its utilization in common carp growth, disease resistance, body color differentiation, feed conversion ratio and other economic traits. Finally, the development direction and measures of the common carp breeding industry in the new era are proposed, with the purpose of improving fish breeding in China.