The rice stem borer, Chilo suppressalis (Walker), is an important rice pest in China, and has evolved resistance to several classes of insecticides. Flubendiamide is a phthalic diamide insecticide that shows selective insecticidal activity against lepidopterous insects. The susceptibility of 40 field populations of C. suppressalis, collected in 2011 and 2012 in seven provinces of south-eastern China, to flubendiamide was determined through rice seedling dipping bioassay method. Of these 40 populations, seven populations that were seldom exposed to flubendiamide were used to set up the baseline sensitivity, and the LC₅₀ value was 0.092 mg/L. Variation in susceptibility among the 40 field populations was high (34-fold). The range of mean lethal concentration (LC₅₀) values in response to this chemical was between 0.032 mg/L (FS11) and 1.090 mg/L (JH12) across the populations. Substantial variations of the susceptibility to flubendiamide were detected among different geographic populations. There was no significant difference observed between years for most populations, except for populations from Jinhua and Lujiang. Resistance ratios to the chemical ranged from 0.8 to 11.8, indicating that most colonies remained susceptible or showed certain decrease in susceptibility. It was found that 16 of the 40 populations had some level of resistance. However, moderate level of resistance was discovered in only one population from JH12 from Zhejiang province (11.8-fold). Other 15 populations showed low level of resistance (5.1–9.3-fold) to flubendiamide. These data are useful in future monitoring programs for detecting any changes in susceptibility as a result of using flubendiamide.