Abstract
The digital transformation of vocational education in China has accelerated alongside national digitalization strategies and rapid advances in artificial intelligence, yet the long-term evolution and emerging frontiers of research in this field remain insufficiently synthesised. This study examines the historical development, changing hotspots, and future directions of vocational education informatization in China. Literature was retrieved from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), with 956 valid articles from core journals and CSSCI sources retained for analysis. CiteSpace was employed to conduct keyword co-occurrence, betweenness centrality, clustering, time-zone, and keyword burst analyses. The results show that research has progressively shifted from infrastructure construction, digital resources, and network-based teaching toward deeper integration of digital technologies with teaching reform, industry-education integration, smart education, and digital governance. Sustained hotspots include teaching reform, talent cultivation, digital resources, and school-enterprise cooperation, while emerging frontiers increasingly focus on AI-empowered vocational education, virtual simulation and immersive learning, digital governance, and teacher and student digital literacy. The findings indicate that vocational education informatization is moving from technology- and construction-oriented expansion toward integrated, application-oriented, intelligent, and governance-focused development.