【Purpose/significance】This paper reveals the law of the growth of the literature on the research of competitive intelligence, the distribution of academic output power and the hot spot of the research in China in order to provide the quantitative reference information for the enterprise competitive intelligence work.【Method/process】In this paper, the Chinese Journal of Science(network version) is used as the data source, and bibliometric analysis on the competitive intelligence research papers from 1987 to 2016 is made by using SPSS software package,and a visual map is drawn.【Result/conclusion】The growth of our country enterprise competitive intelligence research literature is in line with the law of exponential growth, which has gone through three stages: birth and slow period, rapid development period and maturity stage. The spatial distribution of the literature shows obvious level and imbalance. The research focus is mainly on four fields: enterprise competitive intelligence and anti-competitive intelligence research, enterprise competitive intelligence system research.