The rapid industrialization and urbanization in China require a high level of safety management and thus urge the development of safety risk assessment in China. In the past two decades, many safety risk assessment research findings have been published in international journals by Chinese scholars, while it is not clear the development progress and China's contributions to the world in this research field. Therefore, a systematic and thorough literature review is conducted to investigate risk assessment research in China. Firstly, the research publications authored by Chinese scholars are searched from the well-known literature database Web of Science to support the analysis of risk assessment research in China. Secondly, a bibliometric analysis is conducted for the obtained literature related to risk assessment research in China to find out publication trends, research organizations, research authors, research topics, and research methods. Then, a thorough analysis of research topics and research methods is carried out to present the research progress. Finally, possible future research issues in the risk assessment research domain are discussed based on this literature review. According to the discussion, more attention in China should be paid to the risk of digital or autonomous systems, the risk related to extreme events, and the risk in large cities.