Materials and their manufacturing technology are the premise and foundation to support and guarantee the safe and stable operation of nuclear engineering. Among the 56 nuclear power plants in service or under construction, 52 nuclear power plants adopt pressurized water reactors. Demonstration power plants are being built for the high temperature gas cooled reactor and the sodium cold fast reactor, and other reactor types such as molten salt reactors, accelerator-driven subcritical systems, and supercritical water reactors are still in the research stage. This paper summarized and analyzed the challenges and problems in the course of research, manufacturing, and engineering application of materials used for China's new-generation nuclear power plants, and further proposed some strategic suggestions for the development of these materials, including establishing a national steering committee to guide their development; establishing a national research fund to specially support their development; creating an advanced and complete standards system for their development; constructing a national shared engineering-level radiation experimental device; and under the principle of independence, continuing the international cooperation in the related flied.