The Chinese salt lake megaregion is controlled by the arid and semiarid climate, and modern salt lakes are mainly distributed within the limits of annual mean precipitation <500 mm. According to the geomorphological features, structural conditions and material compositions, salt lakes in China may be broadly divided into four salt lake regions. The degrees of exploitation and utilization of these salt lakes are different because the four regions have differed in climatic changes and structural activities and have their own characteristics of salt lake evolutions since the beginning of Quaternary, and the salt lakes therein have different scales, economic values and traffic technical conditions. Compared with others, the Jarantai (Jartai) Salt Lake and Yuncheng Salt Lake are better in respect to comprehensive utilization and environmental protection, and the potash salt lakes represented by Qarhan are largest in exploitation scale. At present, there exist many problems about the environment in the salt lake regions of China, especially in remote medium and small basins, where abusive or wasteful mining, low recovery and mining of a single saline mineral alone cause impoverishment of large quantities of byproducts. Furthermore, the climatic environmental factor may also cause significant change of the salt lake environment. Since 1987, in the background of global warming, the climate in the northwest salt lake region has turned warm and wet and the lakes have had a tendency of expansion and rise; whereas for east of the region the climate has been still in a warmdry stage, the lake level has lowered and salt lakes have been desertified. With the implementation of the strategy of building an environmentally friendly society in China, increasing attention is being paid to the ecoenvironmental protection. It is suggested that experience and advanced techniques in comprehensive utilization, overall development and environmental protection of salt lakes at home and abroad be further extracted so as to strengthen observation and monitoring of the environmental change of salt lakes and build an environmentally friendly, green, great salt lake industry.