The 304 stainless steel plates are double-sided shocked by laser beam with a wavelength of 1064 nm and the pulse width of 10 ns, the surface morphology of sample treated by laser shock processing (LSP) is observed by a three-dimensional profilometer, and the residual stress of the specimen surface is measured by an X-ray diffractometer, respectively. And a servo-hydraulic fatigue test machine is employed to implement the fatigue experiments on samples without and with LSP to obtain the fatigue crack growth rate curves. In addition, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) is applied to detect the fracture morphology at different crack growth stages. The experimental results indicate that LSP can not only cause plastic deformation to a maximum value of 25 μm and form compressive residual stress with a maximum value of -218 MPa on the sample surface, bust also transfer the crack source to the inside of the sample. And the crack growth rate at the shocked region is significantly retarded by LSP. The validity of utilizing LSP to improve the fatigue resistance of 304 stainless steel can be verified according to the fatigue crack growth rate curves.