This article summarizes the sheep improvement work in Northeast China,Xinjiang,Shanxi and other regions during the more than 50 years from the end of the Qing Dynasty to 1949,and introduces the process and achievements of improving sheep breeds by introducing foreign fine wool sheep and semi fine wool sheep breeds and crossbreeding with local breeds such as Mongo-lian sheep and Kazakh sheep before the establishment of the People's Republic of China.On the basis of summarizing the achieve-ments and experiences of sheep improvement before the establishment of the People's Republic of China,as well as the lessons of failure,this paper proposes reference methods and strategies that can be applied for contemporary sheep genetic improvement work.