Arid and semi-arid regions of East Asia (“East-Asian drylands”) are the major components of the global arid areas, where water resources are scarce, and dust storms frequently occur. The effects of dust aerosols on atmospheric radiation budget and cloud microphysical processes are nonnegligible over there. By overviewing the research progress of aerosol- and cloud-related issues in the East-Asian drylands, the properties of aerosols and clouds, as well as aerosolcloud interactions, are focused on in this paper. It is found that the aerosols in the East-Asian drylands are dominated by dust aerosols, with the highest optical thickness in spring. Meanwhile, the East-Asian drylands have abundant cloud water resources, which are predominated by high clouds, with higher cloudiness in summer. Dust aerosols can heat the atmosphere by the direct radiative effect and affect the cloud micro-physical processes and precipitation through indirect and semi-direct effects. Due to the limitation of scarce observations and incomplete parameterization in model simulation, there still exist large uncertainties in dust-cloud interactions over the East-Asian drylands. Therefore, reducing the contribution of aerosols and clouds to the uncertainties in climate change research has become an urgent scientific issue in future.