As a strategic focus of talent cultivation in the new period, in recent years China's vocational education practice has seen "leapfrog" style development. A systematic look at the current state of Chinese vocational education research and exploration of its core research institutions, most frequently cited works, research "hot topics," and leading research is clearly needed and meaningful, and the method of using knowledge maps based on knowledge metrics provides an effective path to resolving this. Knowledge map software CiteSpace III was used to obtain quantitative statistics on works related to vocational education recorded in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index database and to explore the date, distribution by journal, and characteristics of the works; draw institutional cooperation maps; examine the core research institutions and their influence; draw publication citation maps; reveal most frequently cited works and their characteristics; draw key word co-occurrence maps; and explore the distribution of research hot topics and leading research. [This article was translated by Jeff Keller.]