Since 1990s，China’s theater industry began the modernization and the industry system was basically established. However，under the influence of the theater location，cultural market competition，industry marginalization trends and other factors，the development of the theater industry is still faced with many difficulties and deficiencies：the ‘empty nest’ phenomenon of the theatre is serious；coexistence of regional imbalance and structural imbalance remains；the pattern of operation and management is one-fold；the theatre and troupes are ‘Dual Fragment’；the operational cost and income is imbalanced and so on. During the ‘Thirteenth Five-Year’ plan period，we should learn from the advanced experience of foreign countries in order to form the top-level design of the theater industry development，policy support system，the overall strategic planning and specific measures by ‘supply-side reform’ and ‘demand-side-pull’ on the basis of clarifying the functional orientation of the theater.