It is necessary, important, and urgent to establish rice field ecology as soon as possible for building a Beautiful China, safeguarding food security and food safety, and developing a strong agricultural sector. Rice field ecology is an applied discipline of ecology that studies the structure, function, evolution, and regulation of rice field ecosystems. It is a sub-discipline of agroecology and farmland ecology. Rice field ecology is characterized by its theoretical, applied, comprehensive, regional, and strategic features. The research objective of rice field ecology is to establish rational, high-yield, high-quality, high-efficiency, and sustainable rice field ecosystems. The tasks of rice field ecology encompass four aspects: theoretical research, technological research, developmental research, and achieving high-quality development of rice field ecosystems. In recent years, research in rice field ecology in China has made active progress and remarkable achievements in six areas: (1) greenhouse gas emission patterns and pathways for carbon sequestration and emission reduction in rice field ecosystems; (2) heavy metal pollution in paddy soils and remediation techniques; (3) valuation of ecosystem services in rice fields; (4) eco-agricultural models in rice fields and their ecological environmental effects; (5) natural disasters in rice fields and their green prevention and control; (6) sustainability assessment of rice field ecosystems. Currently, the development of rice field ecology in China faces prominent challenges, including insufficient attention, inadequate funding, suboptimal research conditions, superficial studies, limited outputs, and ineffective summarization of findings. To promote the construction and development of rice field ecology, the following countermeasures and actions must be taken: first, attach strategic importance to the development of rice field ecology; second, increase financial investment; third, improve working conditions; fourth, conduct in-depth research; fifth, strengthen the disciplinary workforce; and sixth, enhance domestic and international exchange and cooperation. In the future, the development of rice field ecology in China will demonstrate trends toward digitalization, greening, higher efficiency, improved quality, and knowledge-intensive transformation.