Abstract: To discuss the concept of communicable disease surveillance, analyze the problems in communicable disease surveillance and outlook its future in the mainland of China. Retrospective analysis was conducted by using historical data of communicable surveillance in China. Since the SARS crisis in China,the laws and regulation on communicable disease surveillance has been revised and developed, including the law of public health emergency response, the law of communicable disease prevention and control, the law of frontier health quarantine, the regulation of public health emergency response, the rule for public health emergency and communicable disease surveillance information reporting. In the area of communicable disease surveillance, new concepts have been established and old concepts have been revised and improved, such as communicable disease early warning, public health emergency events surveillance and surveillances based on risk assessment. In the surveillance practice, the presence of notifiable communicable disease surveillance system, public health surveillance system, communicable disease early warning system and specific disease surveillance system could generally satisfy national disease prevention and control information need. In the new era, the communicable disease surveillance system in China should be a globalized, integrated and transparent one for sharing of information, decision making and early warning of disease epidemic. In recent years, great progress has been made in the theory and practice of communicable disease surveillance in China. The surveillance key tasks in the new era will be establishing and improving event based surveillance system, including public health emergency surveillance, public sentiment surveillance, syndrome complex surveillance, resource background surveillance on the basis of improving routine surveillance system, and the dynamic risk assessment mechanism.