The study of volcanic rocks in orogenic belts aims mainly at retracing the tectono-magmatic evolutionary history of orogenic belts. A general survey of the formation, evolutionary histories of continental orogenic belts both in China and abroad reveals that orogenic belts have often undergone numerous and varied tectono-evolutionary stages, such as palaeocontinental break-up, ocean-land transition, continental matching-collision, intracontinental extension-basin-range coupling, and new tectonic uplift (intracontinental orogeny), which are respectively accompanied by characteristic volcano-magmatisms. We might therefore retrace the tectono-magmatic evolutionary history of orogenic belts in the light of characteristics of volcanic magmatism at different forming and evolutionary stages of orogenic belts and further explore some important scientific problems of global dynamics and comparative planetary dynamics by means of comparison on larger scales. Some important problems on the study of volcanic rocks of orogenic belts, which include volcanic magmatism within the plate, volcanic magmatism at constructive plate margins and volcanic magmatism at destructive plate margins, are discussed and reviewed in this paper.