Copepod is one of the most dominant metazoans in terms of abundance and biomass in oceans. To investigate the importance of copepods in plankton community, growth rate is one of the indispensable factors deserving examination. In this study, we conducted shipboard incubation by artificial cohort methods to estimate the size-specific growth rate of copepods in the East China Sea. The spatial-temporal variation of growth rate was linked to environmental factors. We tested the hypothesis that copepod community growth rates follow the metabolic theory. Our results suggest that in general, factors inferred from the metabolic theory (i.e. temperature and body size) are correlated with the estimated growth rates. We note however, the allometric coefficients vary among taxa, suggesting phylogenetic effects.