This paper comparatively outlines the international literatures on the research of “China’s online contentious discourse”, based on 128 academic articles both in Chinese and English. The basic indexes of literature, such as the quantity and distribution, type of research, research focus, research topic, theory framework, and research method are described as a whole. Basically, it can be concluded that this topic of research layout across the feld from humanities to social sciences, among them the linguistics and literature concern on text structure, the mass culture concerns more on power relationship, and the politics and sociology pay more attention on political effect. Under the in?uence of “theory turn of power” in humanities and social sciences, micropower theory which is represented by Michel Foucault is accepted by many different research approaches in recent years, which takes different feld like mass cultural study, social movements, and public participation together. As a result, “discourse is action”, “playful is resistance” are accepted as a consensus by more and more researchers. However, there are fundamental diversities between academic study and administration study which is a special type in domestic research, in terms of how to identify, evaluate and treat the online contentious discourse. Finally, the problems existing in current study were also discussed.