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Background and Aims:This study was designed to analyze the effects of age and clinicopathological characteristics on prognosis of Chinese patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods:The clinical data of 2032 HCC patients who were first diagnosed with HCC and underwent curative hep-atectomy in our hospital between January 2006 and January 2011 were retrospectively analyzed. Results: Younger HCC patients (age <40 years, n=465) had a significantly higher hepatitis B infection rate, larger tumors, higher alpha-feto-protein levels, higher preoperative liver function, and more frequent vascular invasions than older patients. Most younger patients were suitable for anatomical hepatectomy, and their tumors were found to be at a highly advanced stage. The recurrence-free survival and overall survival rates of younger HCC patients were significantly worse than those of older pa-tients but this difference disappeared after propensity score matching. Multivariate analysis of pre-matched samples showed that age #40 years was one of the independent risk factors associated with poor overall survival. Conclusions:Younger patients showed different clinicopathological charac-teristics than older patients, such as higher rates of hepatitis B infection and advanced tumors. The recurrence-free surviv-al and overall survival rates of younger HCC patients after hepatectomy may be similar to those of older patients.