Objective It is an important issue to explore the research hotpot and research frontiers of China’s public health performance. Methods Taking 1592 articles related to public health performance from 1988 to 2018 which are retrieved from “China National Knowledge Infrastructure” as the data source, we have drawn maps to visualize the Keywords, the core of authors, major research institutions and important scholarly journals by Citespace. Results The number of research documents in public health performance research increased first, and then decreased after reaching the peak in 2014; the study of public health performance focused on performance appraisal, performance evaluation, community health services, performance management, performance, performance related pays, township health centre, disease prevention and control, index system, Public health service,etc. Discussion In order to improve China’s overall performance of public health, we should continue to strengthen the theoretical and practical research on public health performance, focus on systematic research on public health performance management, and strengthen collaborative research on public health performance.