Abstract: There are reports about container terminal construction or development of related technologies in China sometimes on TV, however, a comprehensive review of the development in the field will give a deeper understanding of the field. This paper investigates the documents published on CNKI and reviews the documents belong to topic Container Terminal by means of the topic model. The thesis published after 1992 are analyzed and the development in past 30 years are explored and the hot spot of R ＆ D and the leading edge of technology development are presented. The work intensity-time distribution of 16 research topics is studied showing 6 of them going up and 3 of them going down, which is a good representation of current situation.