China’s unconventional oil and gas is realizing the overall strategic development, and hydrocarbons in source rock strata have become the main component of unconventional oil and gas reserves and production. Based on the oil and gas geological conditions and industrial practice of source rock strata in China, this paper mainly obtains four research understandings. (1) The oil and gas in source rock strata includes two types: source rock oil & gas and tight oil & gas, which are vertically distributed in five oil & gas accumulation domains: Cenozoic, Cretaceous, Jurassic- Triassic, Upper Paleozoic and lower Paleozoic. (2) Petroleum geology of source rock strata in China is a new subject of petroleum geology, which studies the types, occurrence mechanism, enrichment law, distribution characteristics, production mechanism, evaluation method, key technology and development strategy of oil and gas resources in China’s onshore source rock strata. Its core is to study and evaluate the “sweet area and sweet section” of oil and gas in source rock strata, including “six property”, ie. source rock property, reservoir property, oil bearing property, fluidity property, fracture forming property and economy property. (3) Over the past 10 years, research and production on China’s hydrocarbons in source rock strata have made important progress, with the large- scale development of tight sandstone gas, steady development of tight oil, rapid development of shale gas, accelerated trial of shale oil, and sustained development of coalbed methane and oil shale oil. In 2020, China’s unconventional source rock strata oil and gas production has accounted for 18% of the total production. (4) In the future, it is suggested to focus on solving the bottleneck problems that restrict the large- scale utilization and development of oil and gas resources in China’s onshore source rock strata, such as medium and low formation pressure tight oil, water bearing tight sandstone gas, medium and low rank coalbed methane, terrestrial and transitional shale gas, and medium and low maturity shale oil, and to explore and create two subversive underground “man- made oil and gas reservoirs” of shale in- situ transformation and coal underground gasification. Hydrocarbons in source rock strata will become the most realistic resource for “stabilizing oil and increasing gas”. It is estimated that source rock strata gas is expected to exceed 50% of the total natural gas production in 2030, and source rock strata oil will account for about 10%~15% of the total crude oil production.