The target of average global 2°C warming compared to pre-industrial times was agreed by more than 100 countries, and was adopted at COP 21 (21st session of the Conference of the Parties) to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in 2015. However, even if the INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) for 2025 and 2030 could be fully implemented in the future, a warming of around 2.7°C at least above pre-industrial would appear before 2100, which will result in negative impacts and risks for agriculture, natural ecosystem, socio-economic system, etc. Therefore, assessment on the climate change impacts and application of adaptation measures against climate change risks have been commonly accepted by the governments, scientific communities and international organizations. The newly-published Third Assessment Report of the Chinese Climate Change had assessed the newest findings about the impacts and adaptations of climate change in China, which was continually studied by Chinese scholars after the second assessment report. Most researchers have reached a consensus that the impacts of climate change had emerged in different fields (such as agriculture, water resource, ecosystem, cryosphere, and coastal zone) and areas of China. Climate change impacts have pros and cons, while the disadvantages outweighed, especially for the further warming under climate change scenarios. The characteristics of the impact assessments include: the assessment on the impacts of climate change on the key sectors are more comprehensive, the studies on the responding processes to the climate change for important sectors are more thorough, the assessing methods and data are more standardization, the pros and cons of climate change impacts were identified for different fields and areas. And then, this article analyzed the research gaps for the studies on the impacts and adaptations of climate change. Although several studies were entitled as climate change impact', the influencing mechanism was poorly investigated. For example, most former studies just compared the range and trend of climate change with the changes in sectoral aspects, lacking the responding processes-based studies for vulnerability and adaptation. The impacts from climate factors and non-climate factors are difficult and hardly to separate, which, together with difficulties in climate change simulation and projection, caused the significant uncertainty in climate change risk assessment. As for the climate change adaptation, due to the above-mentioned problems existing in research on climate change impacts, the scientific basis for development of adaptive technologies is rather weak. Furthermore, in order to promote climate change adaptation, adaptive mechanism and capacity building are urgent to be strengthened. And last, the paper pointed out that the future studies should concentrate on reducing the research uncertainties for the impacts of climate change, the improvement of the quantitative level of risk assessment, enhancing the multi-disciplinarity studies, application of the adaptation principle of benefit tending and harm avoiding, promoting the orderly adaptation mechanism and the measurement of quantitative adaptation.