Objective To analyze the trends of case detection and other indicators of leprosy in China during 1985-2002.Methods Data reported by each province were collected by China National Leprosy Database in Nanjing P.R.China.All data about registered cases were put into computer for analysis.Results From 1985 to 2002, a total of 49 477 leprosy new cases had been detected. Among them, 69.5% were multibacillary cases and 25.4% had grade 2 disability. The child cases aged below 15 years accounted for 3.74% of total cases.Totally, 5824 cases and 303 cases relapsed after dapsone (DDS) mono-therapy and multidrug therapy (MDT), respectively.Case detection showed a marked reduction from 0.47/100 000 in 1985 to 0.18/100 000 in 1993 although there were several spurts due to operational factors. From 1994, case detection showed no significant decline. The grade 2 disability among new patients decreased from 31.4% in 1985 to 23.4% in 2002. The child case detection rate among new cases fluctuated between 2.70%-3.56% from 1999 to 2002. The incidence of relapse declined after the introduction of DDS mono-therapy.However, it increased after the introduction of MDT.Conclusion China experiences in leprosy control show that it will take a long time with continuing present leprosy control activities to bring down the case detection and other indicators to a very low level even after reaching the elimination goal of leprosy.