Concurrent chemoradiotherapy is widely accepted as the standard treatment for locally advanced inoperable esophageal cancer, and 50.0 to 50.4 Gy is recommended as the optimal dose for definitive treatment by the international guidelines. However, esophageal cancer in China is quite different from that in western countries in terms of the pathological type and biological characteristics, and a radiation dose of 60 Gy is recommended. Whether dose-escalated radiotherapy could bring survival benefits remains to be urgently resolved. Some scholars indicate that the higher radiation dose is correlated with better local tumor control and more favorable survival outcomes, whereas others hold the view that increased toxicity and no survival benefits have been observed in the high dose arm. Therefore, this review is to evaluate the impact caused by different radiation doses and assess the clinical efficacy, aiming to individualize the radiation dose.