Objective <p>This study aims to report low physical activity related colorectal cancer (LPARCC) death and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in 1990–2021, and decompose the changes in disease burden into population growth, population aging, and epidemiological changes.</p> Methods <p>We obtained LPARCC data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) online database. The Joinpoint regression model and the age-period-cohort model (APC) were used to describe the trend of disease burden and analyzed the effects of age, period, and cohort. Finally, a recently developed decomposition method was applied to partition changes in the burden of disease from 1990 to 2021 into components associated with population growth, population aging, and epidemiological changes.</p> Results <p>From 1990 to 2021, there were significant increased trends in all ages and age-standardized rates of summary exposure values of low physical activity, with percentage changes of 0.46 (95% CI: 0.16 to 0.86) and 0.16 (95% CI: -0.08 to 0.45), respectively. The percentage change of age-standardized mortality rates (ASMR) for LPARCC from 1990 to 2021 was − 0.07 (95% CI: -0.38–0.37) and percentage change of age-standardized DALY rate (ASDR) was − 0.09 (95% CI: -0.37–0.33), both of them showed non-significantly decreased trends. In addition, the results of the Joinpoint regression model demonstrated that the annual percentage changes in ASMR and ASDR rates for LPARCC were − 0.22 (95% CI: -0.52–0.09) and − 0.29 (95% CI: -0.55– -0.03), respectively. Finally, from 1990 to 2021, the ASMR of LPARCC increased by 191.19%, which could be partitioned into age structure (170.62%), mortality change in low physical activity (-15.42%), and population size (35.99%), respectively.</p> Conclusion <p>Over the past 30 years, the number of LPARCC death and DALYs in China had shown an upward trend, which was mainly related with population aging.</p>