Abstract: The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NFSC) has implemented the application process according to four funding categories in line with the scientific nature of research and category-specific review. New features and trends of program application and funding have been observed in the field of clinical oncology under the Health Sciences Department of NFSC. This article summarizes the overview of program application and funding on clinical oncology by NSFC in the year of 2020, including General Programs, the Young Scientists Fund and the Fund for Less Developed Regions. Furthermore, the general programs applied and funded in 2020 were classified and analyzed in-depth according to the funding categories of the scientific nature, cancer types by site and research directions. We also investigated the programs in the context of the new application code system which will be used starting in 2021. In the meantime, some new characteristics were discussed regarding the program application and funding on clinical oncology in 2020 in combination with the progress of oncology research.