Water, energy and food (WEF) are important resources for meeting basic human needs and socio-economic development. Over the past 15 years, WEF-related research has attracted widespread attention at domestic and foreign countries, and the number of publications has increased by nearly 100 times, which has become a hotspot of current research. The quantitative method is based on CiteSpace software, and Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure are used to construct a knowledge library. By analyzing the similarities and differences in research scales, methods, and targets at domestic and foreign countries, we aim to investigate the future research direction of WEF in China. The results show that: (1) The number of literature related to WEF nexus research has been increasing from 2008 to 2022, and the related research is broadly categorized into three phases, which are the conceptual exploration period (2008-2014), the initial development period (2015-2017), and the booming development period (2018-2022). The number of publications as a whole shows that the cumulative number of international publications is 8.5 times higher than that of domestic ones. (2) According to the quantitative Citaspace methodology, it was found that the research hotspots internationally focused on research on mobility between resources based on quantitative assessment methods, while domestically it focused on the analysis of influencing factors to support policy formulation. The research frontier internationally consists of 3 main stages, the first stage (2010-2013) focuses on macro management, the second stage (2014-2015) moves towards micro, region-specific location development trends, and the third stage (2016-2022) is more detailed, in-depth and diversified research. The domestic research frontier is lagging behind but is also divided into 3 phases, focusing on spatial analysis, bibliometric analysis and analysis of the impact of external factors, respectively. (3) According to the qualitative summary, the international research scale focuses on the densely populated urban areas, while the domestic research focuses on the areas with prominent WEF conflicts, such as the Yellow River Basin and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. In terms of research methodology, international research focuses on quantitative assessment and simulation optimization, while domestic research focuses on quantitative assessment and indicator evaluation. In terms of research targets, both domestic and international researchers focus on WEF internal research. In the future, China needs to pay more attention to the understanding of WEF bonding mechanism, the expansion of research scale, the development of integrated model, and the coupling of external elements, and this study can provide a reference for expanding the research direction of WEF bonding relationship in China.