Coastal zone is transitional area between land and sea. Under the impacts of climate change, coastal zone is threatened by stressors such as sea-level rise, intensified storm surges. It is a common trend in global coastal governance and ecological security to protect the coastal zone by ecological barriers. This paper illustrates the evolution of coastal ecological barriers from pristine natural state, agricultural civilization, industrial civilization to ecological civilization. It reviews the evolution of understanding of resilience, damage process, and restoration domestically and internationally, elucidates the trend of future coastal protection engineering which is moving toward resilience enhancement. Then the concept of Resilient Coastal Ecological Barrier Engineering (RCEBs) is proposed, it covers conceptual and theoretical foundations, structures, functions and classification, as well as the framework of engineering technical standards and implementation guarantees. The paper discusses the challenges in RCEBs, and gives the suggestions, such as optimizing the spatial allocation of coastal zones, building a perception network with intelligent terminal devices, and forming a full closed loop centered on improving coastal resilience and realizing the value of ecological products. Finally, this paper prospects the future development directions of coastal protection projects: shifting from single protective elements to integrated land-sea systematic protection, from static assessment to dynamic response, and from resilience built by engineering to the resilience built by natural-social systems. These efforts will further facilitate disaster prevention and mitigation in coastal zones, and coordinate ecological protection with economic development.