Objective: To systematically analyze the expression of autophagy-related protein Beclin 1 (BECN1) in gastric cancer tissue and the correlation between BECN1 expression and clinicopathologic features of gastric cancer patients. Methods: The studies investigating BECN1 expression in gastric cancer tissues and its clinical significance published up to February 2015 were collected by searching the national and international databases. After data extraction, a meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 and Stata12.0 software. Results: Nine studies were finally included, involving 1 620 gastric cancer patients. The results of this meta-analysis showed that the positive expression rate of BECN1 in gastric cancer tissues was significantly lower than that in non-gastric cancer tissues (OR=0.11, 95% CI=0.02–0.62, P=0.01), in well differentiated gastric cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in moderately-poorly differentiated gastric cancer tissues (OR=14.30, 95% CI=5.94–34.4, P=0.000), and in gastric cancer tissues without distant metastasis was significantly higher than that in those with distant metastasis (OR=0.39, 95% CI=0.22–0.70, P=0.001), but no significant relationship was noted between BECN1 expression and gender, age, tumor infiltration depth, lymph node metastasis and TNM stage of gastric cancer patients (all P>0.05). Conclusion: BECN1 may play a crucial role in gastric cancer carcinogenesis and differentiation of gastric cancer cells, and may also participate in the regulation of the metastasis ability of gastric cancer cells.