Abstract: The paper uses the data from articles on debris flow risk in CNKI database during 1988-2017, analyzes the changes in the number of papers published per year and main publishing journals, and identifies the core authors, main research institutions and high-frequent keywords based on CiteSpace Ⅲ. So it analyzes the development of this field in recent 30 years. The results show that:(1)Debris flow risk is an inter-discipline that is related to disaster science, geography and geology. The amount of the papers on debris flow risk of China from 1988 to 2017 shows a fluctuating trend, however, the proportion of the papers published in high impact factor journals and highly cited papers are relatively small.(2)The core authors and core institutions are mostly located in southwestern China and occupy a large proportion of the number of the articles, which is directly related to the frequent happens of debris flows there.(3)Hazard research is the core theme in the early stage of the risk research, and develops into the risk discipline since 2000. At that time, the research themes and the technical methods became diversified. After 2008, the discipline appears to be stagnated. However, the large debris flows induced by Wenchuan earthquake on May 12, 2008 might provide new research cases in the future for the debris flow risk study. This finding will be helpful to understand the history, present situation and the hot spots of the debris flow risk in China.