Objective: MicroRNA (miRNA) expression is deregulated in many types of human cancers. We sought to investigate the expression patterns of the miRNAs, miR-21, miR-145 and miR-155 in sporadic gastric cancer in a Chinese population. Methods: Total RNA was extracted from archived gastric cancer tissues and adjacent non-cancerous tissues from 20 pairs of paraffin-embedded specimens. Expression levels of miR-21, miR-145 and miR-155 were detected by quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR using a specific stem-loop primer, with U6 as the internal reference gene. Results: The expression of miR-21 and miR-155 in gastric cancer samples was significantly higher than in paired non-cancerous samples (P < 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference in expression levels of miR-145 between cancerous and non-cancerous tissues (P > 0.05). Conclusion: In Chinese sporadic gastric cancer tissues, the expressions of the oncogenic miR-21 and miR-155 were significantly up-regulated, while the expression of the tumor suppressor miR-145 was decreased, although this decrease was not statistically significant. Thus there is specificity in the miRNA expression pattern in gastric cancers in the Chinese population.