To analyze the characteristics and trends of international cooperation in malaria-related scientific research in China from 1980 to 2019, and provide a reference for the next step of international cooperation. Academic articles published by Chinese authors from 1980 to 2019 were searched in the Web of Science core database, and the publication years and journal distribution were analyzed. The method of bibliometric analysis was used for the academic articles published from 2000 to 2019 to analyze cooperative countries, funding sources, and cooperative institutions, and meantime software Citespace was used to construct a network map of state co-occurrence, and institution co-occurrence. This study searched a total of 1 500 malaria related academic articles with Chinese co-authorship. TheMalaria Journalhas published the totally most articles(161 articles), followed by PLoS One (60 articles). The publication of papers began to increase exponentially from 2006, and the average annual increase from 2006 to 2018 reached 31.9%. The five-years funding increased rapidly from 176 in 2005—2009 to 2 098 in 2015—2019. According to the analysis of state co-occurrence, more than 25 countries’ scientists published research papers jointly with Chinese authors in 2015—2019, among them the top 5 countries were the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Thailand, and Japan. According to the analysis of institutional co-occurrence, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention was the domestic institution with the highest intermediary centrality, and the University of Oxford was the highest foreign institution. In summary, since 2000, China’s international cooperation in malaria scientific research has grown significantly, the sources of funding have been continuously increasing, and the cooperating countries shows a diversified trend. The establishment of cooperative relations has been concentrated in a few key institutions at home and abroad.