Abstract: Scheduling is the allocation of machines according to time in order to process the collection of jobs. It is a decision-making with the goals of optimizing one or more objectives. In the past decades, the study of scheduling has been advanced quickly. This article presentd a brief history and the recent developments of modern scheduling theory in China. Then, the applications in three focuses are prospected, namely supply chain, semiconductor manufacturing and surgical operation. A future perspective is provided at the end of the article.