It has been more than 70 years since landscape ecology emerged as a new concept of interdisciplinary research. The development of Chinese landscape ecology also has experienced more than 30 years from the introduction to gradually mature. In this process, Chinese landscape ecologists have carried out many studies in combination with the practical situation of China and important progress has been made in many research fields at tracking the international frontier research,. This paper briefly describes the establishment and development history of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE), and analyzes the development of landscape ecology in China through systematic review of landscape ecology literatures. The development of Chinese landscape ecology is divided into five stages: embryonic and germination phase (before the 1980s), introduction and digestion phase (1980-1988), practice and rapid development phase (1989-2000), development and pondering phase (2001-2010), thinking and creation phase (2011-?). And the top ten key research areas of landscape ecology are delineated: the land use patterns and ecological processes and its scale effect, the urban ecological land use and construction of the landscape security pattern, landscape ecological planning and nature reserve network optimization, forest landscape dynamic simulation and ecosystem management, evolution of oasis landscape and eco-hydrological processes, landscape fragmentation and the genetic diversity protection, the multiple ponds system and wetland landscape pattern design, rice-duck/fish farmland landscape and ecosystem health, terrace fields culture landscape and multi-function maintenance, source-sink landscape pattern analysis and soil-water loss evaluation. Finally, the future research priorities of landscape ecology in China are discussed from three aspects: disciplinary development and theory research, hot research regions, and practical applications.