Genome segments S8 of two Chinese isolates of rice black-streaked dwarf virus (RBSDV), one from Zhejiang Province and another from Hebei Province, were amplified by RT-PCR and sequenced. Both segments consisted of 1936 nts in full length (EMBL accession numbers were AJ297431 and AJ297432, respectively) and contained only one big open reading frame which encoded a polypeptide with molecular weight of 68kD. The two Chinese isolates shared 94.0% and 96.5% identity at nucleotide and amino acid level, respectively. They shared 94.5-94.9% and 92.5-92.9% homology with S8 of RBSDV Japanese isolate at nucleotide and amino acid level, respectively; shared 85.1-87.6% and 91.7-91.9% homology with S7 of Italian MRDV (maize rough dwarf virus).