Abstract: This paper briefly reviews the development of surface meteorological observing station network in China, the adjustment of observing tasks as well as the upgrade of observation technology.The surface meteorological network, which was consisted of 96 stations in 1949, has been expanded at an enormous scale.In 2020, the network covers 11, 000 nationallevel stations and over 60, 000 provincial-level stations throughout the country.Moreover, the observing stations have gradually changed from manual to automatic.Since April 1st, 2020, automated observing systems have been fully implemented at all the stations over China, and the terms of automatic measurements have reached 39 atmospheric variables, including temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation.Thus, the efficiency and accuracy of the observation have been greatly improved.Finally, the optimization methods and improvement direction for the future development of surface meteorological observations in China are proposed based on the requirements of China Meteorological Administration for improving the precision level of comprehensive meteorological monitoring in China.