Abstract:Marine culture is an important area in marine scientific research. In order to fully grasp the current status and hotspots of marine culture research in China, we have thoroughly investigated the academic journal articles in CSSCI(Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index), Peking University Core Journals, journals of humanities and social science edition in China’s main marine universities, and Chinese Marine Sociology Research between 1998 and 2019. Bibliometric methods and statistical analysis were applied to research on the growth trends, the distribution, the institutions, the research contents and the topics of the 594 articles related to marine culture. The results show that although the number of the research literature is small, there is a steady development; the relevant high-quality literature has been mainly published in academic journals such as journals of oceanography, aquaculture, humanities and sociology; the scholars are mainly from domestic marine universities and research institutes. Current marine culture research focuses on hot issues such as marine cultural industries, marine consciousness and marine economy, which has formed five major research themes: fostering marine awareness and building a harmonious marine culture; promoting the development of the marine industry depending on marine resources; vigorously developing the marine cultural industry by integrating marine cultural resources; establishing regional marine culture based on local characteristics; and realizing the renaissance of marine culture by protecting and inheriting marine cultural heritage. In the future, marine culture research should be intensified, and than we advise multidisciplinary interaction and exchanges in the academic circle be carried out and more research methods be applied to make the marine culture research a fundamental study to build China into a maritime power.