The paper provides a review of critical discourse analysis (CDA) studies in China from the 1990s. It starts with the origin, definition, and research scope of CDA in America and Europe. Although Chinese scholars began to show interest in CDA studies in 1995, about two decades later than their western counterparts, they have made considerable achievements in the field. On the review research level, quite a few independent studies indicate that CDA studies are attracting increasing attention from the field of linguistics, media studies, politics, and philosophy; theoretical and methodological research reveals that Chinese scholars are endeavoring to yield original research results on the basis of CDA studies abroad; practical research shows that CDA has been applied to the investigation of various discourses to disclose social reality, especially the inter-relationship between discourse, power and ideology.