Objective To investigate the current status of healthy lifestyle and depressive symptoms among middle-aged and elderly patients with chronic lung diseases (CLD) in China, and to explore the correlation between healthy lifestyle and depressive symptoms. Methods Data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) 2020 were utilized. Participants aged ≥45 years with a self-reported physician-diagnosed CLD were included. A healthy lifestyle score was constructed based on 5 indicators, namely smoking, alcohol consumption, physical exercise, sleep duration, and social activities. The simplified version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) was used to assess the current status of depressive symptoms. A binary logistic regression model was adopted to analyze the correlation between healthy lifestyle and depressive symptoms in middle-aged and elderly CLD patients. Results A total of 798 middle-aged and elderly CLD patients were enrolled in this study. Among them, 26.82% (214/798) adhered to a healthy lifestyle, and 69.80% (557/798) had depressive symptoms. Univariate analysis results showed that there were statistically significant differences between patients without depressive symptoms and those with depressive symptoms in terms of gender, educational level, marital status (having a spouse or not), internet usage, comorbidity with other chronic diseases, outpatient visits in the past month, hospitalization experience in the past year, self-rated health status, and adherence to a healthy lifestyle (all P<0.05). The results of binary logistic regression analysis indicated that after controlling for various potential confounding factors, adhering to a healthy lifestyle was associated with a lower risk of depressive symptoms in middle-aged and elderly CLD patients (OR=0.698, 95%CI: 0.521-0.935). Conclusion The adherence rate to a healthy lifestyle is low and the detection rate of depressive symptoms is high among middle-aged and elderly CLD patients in China; a healthy lifestyle is correlated with a lower risk of depressive symptoms.