The purpose of this study is to characterize the graduate education development for creating world-class universities from the insight of the doctoral education in China. A systematic review is applied to examine the doctoral education development in contemporary China. The findings argue that there are tremendous challenges in China's current doctoral cultivation system. The current doctoral talent cultivation encountered various difficulties, specifically for creating the effectiveness of world-class universities. The student-faculty relations were regard as a key theme to investigate the doctoral education development in current China's higher education system. The findings indicated that the selected studies in regard to the doctoral graduate education focusing on the cultivation of innovation ability, the interdisciplinary graduate student training has become one of the important ways of graduate education reform. In addition, the conclusion and remark were offered in the last.