Abstract: Satellite remote sensing is an important technology to acquire the optical characteristics of aerosol. In order to get the aerosol products with the time resolution higher than those from polar orbit satellites and the space coverage larger than those from ground based measurements, the data from Japanese MTSAT geostationary satellite were used to retrieve the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over China. The comparison of the results with AERONET observations shows good linear dependent relations, and the comparison with MODIS products also reveals a consistent distribution pattern. Finally the error sources about the retrieving algorithm were discussed.