The active disturbance rejection control (AD RC), first proposed by Jingqing Han in late 1980s, is a powerful control technology being able to deal with external disturbances and internal uncertainties in large scale for control systems in engineering applications. This survey paper will articulate, from a theoretical perspective, the origin, ideology and progress of ADRC for not only uncertain finite-dimensional systems but also uncertain infinite-dimensional ones. Some recent theoretical developments, general framework and unsolved problems of ADRC for finite-dimensional systems with mismatched disturbances and uncertainties by output feedback, uncertain finite-dimensional stochastic systems, uncertain infinite-dimensional systems described by both the wave equation and the fractional-order partial differential equation are successively addressed, from which we see the challenges and opportunities for this remarkable emerging control technology to various types of control systems.