With the continuous advance of China's national ecological civilization construction, ecological compensation, as an important mechanism, has attained positive progress in both research and practice. Based on the cases and practices of basin-scale horizontal ecological compensation in China, the connotation, object, standard and mode of ecological compensation in the Yangtze River Basin are analyzed preliminarily, and suggestions on the types and difficulties of several urgently needed basin-scale ecological compensation are put forward. The analysis manifests that regardless of block nature reserve or ecological compensation of water flow and water ecology across administrative regions, multi-factors and multi-interest subjects in the basin should be considered comprehensively. Moreover, the compensation standard should be determined among ecological service value, protection cost plus development opportunity cost or environmental quality improvement increment according to the type and importance of protected areas. In addition, during the implementation of compensation projects, the compensation elements and assessment indicators need to be optimized dynamically to promote the sustainable development of ecological compensation.