Abstract: The 16^th International Catalysis Congress (16th ICC) was successfully held in China in July 2016. This paper reviewed the development of catalytic science and technology of China from scratch to small then to large under the efforts of several generations. In 1950s, catalysis discipline was first set up to train early catalytic professionals in Jilin University, Peking University and Xiamen University. Subsequently, a large research team was formed in colleges and universities, the Academy of Sciences, the Enterprise Research Institute to carry out a large number of catalytic researches. Along with the Chinese reform and opening-up, the spring of science came, and the state started to emphasize and strongly support scientific research. Chinese catalytic researchers began to enter the international catalytic academic exchange platform. Famous foreign scientists are invited to visit China and a large number of visiting scholars and foreign students have been sent to the United States, Europe and Japan, many of them have become well-known professors, and grown into catalytic academic elites. The first China-Japan-USA Symposium on Catalysis was held in Dalian in 1982, and it was expanded to become the Asian-Pacific Congress on Catalysis (APCAT), one of the three regional catalytic conferences in the world. After several generations of bidding for the organization of the International Catalytic Congress three times, China won the right to host the 16th ICC. It has effectively promoted the Chinese catalytic academic circles to the international academic ones and improved the influence of catalysis communities in China significantly. The great development in catalytic research and technology has condensed the efforts of several generations of catalysts. To make China a catalytically strong country, there is still a long way to go. We hope that the contemporary scientists can accomplish this historical task.