The invention discloses a zinc oxide resistor disc and a manufacturing method thereof. The zinc oxide resistor disc comprises, by the molar fraction, 95.5% to 99% of zinc oxide base materials, 0.5% to 1.9% of yttrium oxide and 0.5% to 2.6% of zirconium oxide in a sintered mode. The manufacturing method includes the following steps: 1, material dosing; 2, wet grinding pelleting; 3, hydraulic disc forming; 4, segmented sintering. The zinc oxide resistor disc has the advantages of being high in electric potential gradient and large in current flowing capacity; compared with a zinc oxide resistor disc manufactured with a conventional method, the zinc oxide resistor disc manufactured with the manufacturing method has the advantages that the electric potential gradient is increased by near 1/4, and the current flowing capacity is improved by 1/3.