  In this paper, we are concerned with the global existence and optimal rates
of strong solutions for three-dimensional compressible viscoelastic flows. We
prove the global existence of the strong solutions by the standard energy
method under the condition that the initial data are close to the constant
equilibrium state in $H^2$-framework. If additionally the initial data belong
to $L^1$, the optimal convergence rates of the solutions in $L^p$-norm with
$2\leq p\leq 6$ and optimal convergence rates of their spatial derivatives in
$L^2$-norm are obtained.
