Comprehensive investigations on aquatic vegetation have been scarcely implemented in Lake Taihu during the past two decades, which is of special importance with the severe eutrophication and pollution. The change in aquatic vegetation in Lake Taihu since 1960 were analyzed based on the exhaustive survey of vegetation in summer, 2014. The results indicated that 23 species disappeared in Lake Taihu since 1960, in which 7 species disappeared in 1981, 4 species disappeared in 1997, and 12 species disappeared in 2014. From the perspective of spatial distribution, aquatic vegetation showed a trend of expansion in the east part and a trend of shrinking in the west of the lake. The coverage rate of aquatic vegetation to the entire lake area was 8% in 1981, whereas, this value increased to 33.82% in 2014. The biomass of aquatic vegetation increased from approximately 1×10⁵ t in 1960 to 4.472×10⁵ t in 1997, and then decreased from 3.6×10⁵ t in 1997 to 2.909×10⁵ t in 2014, respectively. However, excluding the emergent Phragmities australis community, the biomass of other aquatic vegetation, particularly that of the floating-leafed vegetation, continuously increased. A rapid decrease of biomass was closely related to the diminishing of emergent plants in the eastern lake, which accounted for only 5.15% of the total vegetative biomass in Lake Taihu in 2014. It suggests that now the trouble of swampiness does not exist in this area any longer. The change in community composition revealed that the area of Vallisneria natans sharply decreased, while that of Potamogeton malaianus and Nymphoides peltatum progressively increased. Currently, the main issues of aquatic vegetation management in Lake Taihu are restoring the aquatic vegetation in the northern lake and controlling the overgrowth of aquatic vegetation in the eastern lake.