The number of research articles about Open Access (OA) and Institutional Repository (IR) has grown quickly in recent years, while Chinese universities move slower than their western counterparts. There are only a few experimental institutional repositories (IRs) now, and no explicit campus-wide policies towards open access have been proclaimed. This paper will describe the status of the OA movement in China, and mainly focus on institutional repositories in Chinese Universities. Factors that hinder the development of OA will be discussed; meanwhile we will give some suggestions for constructing IRs in Chinese Universities.