In this paper,we investigate the global existence and long time behavior of strong solutions for compressible nematic liquid crystal flows in threedimensional whole space.The global existence of strong solutions is obtained by the standard energy method under the condition that the initial data are close to the constant equilibrium state in H~2-framework.If the initial datas in L~1-norm are finite additionally,the optimal time decay rates of strong solutions are established.With the help of Fourier splitting method,one also establishes optimal time decay rates for the higher order spatial derivatives of director.