The history and present situation of optical fiber sensors (OFS) development in China in the past 40 years are presented, and three development stages in the technology field are reviewed including quickly development and determining National Projects of OFS in China, the trough both in technology and market because of its un-completeness, and industrialization stage driven by the market. From the view of two aspects, typical OFS technology and its application, new type OFS technology and instrument developing, the main technical achievements of Chinese scholars are summarized including fiber Sagnac interferometer and its applications in gyroscope field, the applications of fiber Michelson interferometer and Mach-Zehnder interferometer in the fields of hydrophone and geophone for oil detection and acoustic detection, optical fiber grating sensing technology and its applications for fire alarming, distributed OFS technology and its typical applications in the fields of largescale smart structure and architecture, optical fiber Fabry-Perot sensing technology and applications, and new type OFS sensing technology and its biomedical applications. The development of OFS research and development exchange platform in China and its important role in promoting the academic development and technology of OFS are expounded. The problems in the development of OFS technology in China are pointed out at present. The development experiences and prospects of OFS technology are summarized and prospected in general.