Adult literacy and literacy education have long been a global agenda. China's literacy education has been developing amid the backdrop of international commitments and goals of adult literacy. Since the founding of new China in 1949, adult literacy policy in China has been continuously evolved within the changing political, economic and social background, and has made great success in illiteracy reduction. By tracing the up-up-plateau-transformation processes of adult literacy policy in China, this paper reports that the policy focus is shifted from political ideology, economic growth, personal development to a mixture of the three currently although the policy influence is declining after 2011. China's success in anti-illiteracy in the past seven decades might be duplicable for other parts of the world that are still facing the adult illiteracy problem.