In the new era,China’s think tanks have entered the“fast lane”of development, and researches on think tanks have developed robustly.In order to clarify the progress in China's think tank research, based on the Chinese Social Science Citation Index(CSSCI database, 625 articles related to think tank research are collected from 1998 to 2017 as samples in this paper. Then, the visualization research of knowledge mapping is conducted by using the analysis methods of co-word and co-citation analysis method in bibiometrics and the tools like Citespace andocinet to buid citation network of citation and high frequency key words. The main conclusions are as follows. Firstly, there is a sharp increase in the literature of researches on domestic think tanks. Secondly, eleven cooperative groups have been formed among the prolific authors in the field of domestic think tank research. Lastly, four research hotspots and three frontier topics have emerged.