China's cold chain logistics began in 1960s, mainly targeting at meat, poultry and aquatic products. At that time, in order to ensure the market supply and adjust the off-peak season, large-scale cold storage was built in major domestic producing areas and big cities, and it was connected by railway cold storage trucks and river water transport cold storage ships. 　　

With the reform and opening-up and economic development, supermarket chains appeared in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and other big cities in the mid-1990s. In order to sell all kinds of frozen and refrigerated foods required by the market, supermarkets used a large number of advanced freezers. The equipment and improvement of the retail terminal cold chain has accelerated the development, manufacture and construction of equipment and technology in all aspects of the cold chain. At this time, a truly modern food cold chain began to appear and develop in China. However, foreign refrigerated transportation rose in the first half of the 19th century on the railways of European and American countries, with a history of more than 150 years. The gap in development time also determines that China's cold chain logistics is just in its infancy, and it lags far behind developed countries in terms of refrigeration rate and management level. 　　

Nowadays, China's cold chain industry is making great strides with the support of policies. However, due to its late start, many industry problems have not been completely solved, and there is still a big gap with the developed countries in the world. With the rapid expansion of markets and enterprises, five major problems that restrict the development of the industry have always been to be solved. 　　

1, the cold chain system has not yet been built.

At present, about 85% of meat, 77% of aquatic products and 95% of vegetables and fruits in China are basically transported and sold at room temperature, and only 12 million tons of fruits rot and 130 million tons of vegetables rot every year, resulting in serious economic losses. As far as developed countries are concerned, Canada has formed a complete cold chain logistics system for agricultural products, and the loss of vegetable logistics is only 5%. At present, the establishment of cold chain system in China needs the strong support of the government. 　　

2. Cold chain facilities are relatively backward.

In recent years, China's cold chain infrastructure is growing rapidly, but compared with China's huge population base, the per capita possession of resources such as cold storage and refrigerated trucks is still low, and some infrastructures are outdated and unevenly distributed, which needs to be upgraded urgently. Refrigerated transportation is an important part of cold chain logistics. Cold chain logistics in China mainly focuses on railway and highway transportation. By 2011, there were 645,000 railway wagons and 6,152 refrigerated wagons in China, accounting for less than 1% of the total railway wagons. The number of road refrigerated trucks is about 50,000, accounting for only 0.3% of freight cars. From the transportation situation, limited by the railway resources and other factors in China, it is difficult for railway refrigerated transportation and highway refrigerated transportation to cooperate, which seriously affects the efficiency of refrigerated transportation. 3. The development of cold chain third-party logistics lags behind.

At present, the basic situation of the development of the third-party cold chain logistics in China is that the third-party logistics enterprises based on food production enterprises and independent third-party logistics companies coexist. Professional third-party cold chain logistics accounts for about 20%, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, lacking industry competitiveness. In addition, most perishable food logistics are operated by manufacturers, processors and retailers themselves, which greatly hinders the cost-effectiveness of the cold chain market and the development of third-party cold chain logistics enterprises. 　　

4. Standardization of cold chain system needs to be improved.

According to incomplete statistics, there are nearly 200 cold chain logistics standards distributed in different industries and departments. However, the construction of cold chain logistics standardization system is managed by departments and regions, which restricts the unity and coordination between the standardization of cold chain logistics related industries. 　　

At present, in addition to the national unified standard management institutions, the cold chain management departments in China also include transportation, railway, civil aviation, health, information and other sectors representing the government. The technical organizations and scientific research institutions involved in the cold chain logistics industry are scattered in various government departments and industries, which makes it difficult to communicate and cooperate with each other and form a unified plan. 　　

5. Low level of informatization.

Cold chain logistics is different from ordinary logistics, its hardware level and cargo operation requirements are more rigid than ordinary goods, and it has higher requirements for information configuration, management level and emergency handling ability of operators. The overall logistics informatization level in China is low, and the informatization status of cold chain transportation industry is not optimistic. Most of the operators are transformed from ordinary logistics, not only unfamiliar with product characteristics, but also less familiar with the operational requirements of cold chain logistics. Therefore, the ability of cold chain logistics emergency plan needs to be improved urgently.