Background Cancer is a global disease that knows no borders. Over the past decade, oncology research had developed rapidly worldwide. The aim of this study was to evaluate the publication characteristics in oncology journals from China and other top-ranking countries. Methods The present study was designed to study publication characteristics in oncology journals from China and other top-ranking countries, the United States (USA), Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom (UK) and France, from 2001 to 2010. We also examined the research output from the three different regions of China: the mainland of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Results Articles published in 163 journals related to oncology were retrieved from the PubMed database. The number of articles showed significantly positive trends for the six countries. The percentage of articles in the world output showed a significantly positive increase in contributions from China, especially the mainland of China. China contributed 4.5% of the total 163 journals, and 2.5% of the journals with the top 10% impact factor (IF) scores. USA contributed 31.4% of the total world output, 40.5% of the top 10% IF score journals and ranked the first. Conclusions This analysis described the research output from each country and region of China, and revealed the positive trend in China during 2001 and 2010. Also, by contrast with other top-ranking countries, these results imply that China falls behind the others in conducting high-quality oncology research. Chin Med J 2011;124(20):3314-3319