Abstract: Objective To understand the detection pattern of public health emergencies in China, and provide evidence for the improvement of public health emergency surveillance capability. Methods The public health emergency related information in China in 2012 were obtained from National Public Health Emergency Management Information System, the detection channel of each event was obtained by analyzing related epidemiological survey report. SPSS 17.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Results Up to 49.86% of the public health emergencies were detected by medical institutions; 25.02% were detected by disease control centers, 11.84% were detected by schools. The disease control centers were notified of food poisoning events mainly by medical institutions and health administrations, accounting for 61.58% and 17.37% of this type of events respectively. The median interval between the onset of events and the first case detection was 5 days, the median interval between the onset of infectious disease event and the first case detection was 6 days and the median interval between the onset of food poisoning and the first case detection was 14 hours. Conclusion The detecting pattern varied with the types of public heath emergencies, the capacity of disease control centers in detecting events actively has been improved, but the timeliness of the detection should be increased. It is necessary to accelerate the establishment of information sharing platform for related departments and shorten the data analysis time for the timely detection and effective control of public health emergency.