Abstract: At the end of year 2018, the total number of built reservoirs in China reached 98, 822, with a total storage capacity of 895.3 billion m³. Reservoirs are not only important parts of national flood defense system, but also are key engineering measures to optimize the allocation of water resources. However, once a dam failure incident happens, it will involve major public safety. In-depth analysis of the historical data of dam failure cases is of great significance for preventing dam failure and improving the management level of disaster prevention and mitigation. Based on the collection of 3541 dam failure cases that occurred in China from 1954 to 2018, this paper focuses on 84 dam failure cases that occurred from 2000 to 2018. Detailed statistical analysis of the dam failure cases is carried out from the perspective of spatial distribution, reservoir size, dam height, type, failure causes, and other aspects. The trend characteristics of dam failure cases since 2000 can be summarized as: (i) Over-standard flooding becomes the main cause of dam failure cases of overtopping; (ii) Dam failure cases caused by quality defects at different locations of reservoirs significantly increased; (iii) The dam failure rate in the western part of China is dramatically higher than in other regions; (iv) Improper operation and management of reservoirs has become an important reason of dam failure incidents. Based on the aforementioned analysis, suggestions for further strengthening the dam safety management are proposed including that more attention should be paid to the impact of climate change on reservoirs, the engineering construction and operation safety supervision system should be continuously optimized, the management and operation conditions in the central and western regions of China should be intrinsically improved, and engineering measures and non-engineering measurements should be taken into account simultaneously in the field of dam safety management.