Malignant diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, and heart diseases have ranked the top 3 causes of death in urban China over the past decade. Due to lack of effective prevention and control method, malignant diseases are currently the major cause of death prior to the average life span in China. A focus of modern medicine is to explore the risk factors and the progression of malignant diseases. Community-based epidemiological research on malignancies lays a foundation for accurately determining the incidences, mortalities, and their changes, assessing disease burden of malignancies, exploring the etiological factors and their evolutionary rule, conducting pertinent prophylaxis, and evaluating the therapeutic efficacy. The key for etiological research of malignant diseases is to understand the dynamic interactions between environmental risk factors and the genetic susceptibility. The etiological factors and important biomarkers for early diagnosis of malignant diseases should be further verified in community-based cohort studies. Community-based population medical research possesses particular advantages in evaluating the effect of clinical interventions on survival of patients with malignancies. Enforcement of community-based population medicine is of great public health significance in reducing the incidence and improving the survival of patients with malignant diseases.