: China’s meat and sheep industry has a prominent position in the world. In order to clarify the current development history and research frontiers of China’s meat and sheep industry, the high-quality literature in the China Knowledge (CNKI) and Web of Science (WoS) databases from 1994—2024 was taking as the data base, and the knowledge of China’s meat and sheep industry in terms of the number of publications, authors, journals and institutions, and keywords were analyzed by using CiteSpace, its main characteristics, research hotspots and new trends were explored. The results show that meat sheep industry research gradually emerged after 2014, and the relevant research is mostly concentrated in agricultural colleges and universities, mainly in the direction of animal husbandry and animal medicine, and there is a certain scale of cooperation mechanism among scholars. The literature focuses on development countermeasures, breeding scale and profitability, the literature focuses on product quality and nutrition regulation. In the future, domestic and international research on meat sheep industry should continue to enhance the research heat, enrich the research methodology, promote multidisciplinary cross-fertilization, and help realize the high-quality development of the industry under the dual drive of scientific and technological innovation and green development.