Abstract: Habitat fragmentation leads to decrease in biodiversity and to damage of ecological functions. Construction of ecological corridors can connect separated landscapes elements, which plays an important role in protecting and restoring of biodiversity and in maintaining and delivering of ecological functions. The concept, origin and development of ecological corridor are introduced and the ecological functions of the ecological corridor are analyzed with respect to biodiversity protection, environmental protection of ecological resources, development of ecological security and suitable responses to global climate change. Furthermore, methods of construction of ecological corridors are examined based on the minimum cost distance model and the circuit theory, and the influences of the biotic habitat and the length and quality of the corridor on the effectiveness of the ecological corridor are discussed. Research on ecological corridors had a late start in China, and has been limited to the topics of urban afforestation, landscape aesthetics and small-scale ecological protection. By analyzing the basis for, the approaches to and the existing cases of the construction of large-scale international ecological corridors in an international setting, references for the construction of ecological corridors in China are provided. It is concluded that in China the construction of ecological corridors should be focused on their ecological functions at the landscape and regional scale and could be based on the existing ecological planning.