The invention discloses a method for cultivating river crab, comprising the following steps: choosing China crab as parent crab, temporary culturing female and male crab separately, then mating; culturing the crab with ovum at temperature under 5 Deg C for more than 2 months; the crab with ovum producing out ovum and the ovum growing into flea larval, megalops larva, young crab, crab strain and adult crab. The water quality should be in accordance with the regulation of í«water quality regulation for fresh water cultivationí» during process of megalops larva growing into young crab; supplying fresh minced fish and pig blood for I claver crab; the animal bait before July and after September for young crab culturing is over 70%, and from July to September is over 90%. Comparing with the invention is characterized by rapid growth, strong disease-resistant, the increased group weight by 10.2%, and reduced disease generation rate from 8%-10% to under 3%.