Abstract: The paper deals with the research approaches of sound change in Chinese dialects. The traditional methods are as follows, i.e., descriptive and comparative method, the integration of text-research method and historical-comparative method, lexical diffusion theory, overlapped theory, and historical strata analysis. The article also discusses the future developments of sound change, i.e., equilibrium-punctuation, phonetic typology, geographical linguistics, experimental phonetics, and variation sociolinguistics. The author holds that these methods are complementary to each other.