Abstract: During the 20^th Century, most hydrocarbon reserves were found in Meso-Cenozoic continental rifts and foreland basins in China. While in the 21^st Century, the increase points of reserves are transferring to Paleozoic marine carbonates in craton basins. The discoveries of Great Tahe Petroleum Field, and Great Sulige and Puguang Natural Gas Fields indicate the favorable exploration prospect of the Pre-Mesozoic marine carbonate in continental China, which is the essential strategic succeeding scope of hydrocarbon resources exploration in China. However, almost all the hydrocarbon-bearing basins in China are superimposed basins, their special exploration situations have caused the slow increase of hydrocarbon reserves. Seeing from the present hydrocarbon exploration extent, the future work will develop toward two aspects, one is in search of new exploration areas, new scopes, new strata and new types, the other is to speeding up the prospect evaluation of the hydrocarbon resources in new areas of the main hydrocarbon-bearing basins. These two aspects require not only the support of newly developed detecting techniques, more importantly, require the updating of the conception and recognizing, using new theories and new thoughts to break through the recognizing of the complex geological tectonic rules controlling the reserving state of the hydrocarbon in the deep of the superimposed basins and instruct the hydrocarbon exploration and evaluation strategically. Basin analysis → petroleum system → hydrocarbon bearing zone → prospect evaluation is the main rhythm of recognizing and predicting new exploration areas and reservoir potential evaluation in superimposed basins. And the basins with characters of integrality, slight reconstruction, and favorable seal boundary are main targets of new exploration area initial evaluation and strategic district selection. The main exploration direction and research field was discussed at the end of the paper.