Abstract: The performance of the Summer Olympic Games is an important indicator to measure the effectiveness of the construction of a leading sports nation. Using the methods of literature research, interview and logical analysis, the achievements, experience and problems of China's Summer Olympic journey over the past 40 years are analyzed. The study concludes that, based on the leadership of the Party and the support of the Olympic strategy as well as the new-type nation-wide system, China has achieved remarkable results in responding to "the question of history", expanding the coverage of the participating sports, improving the quality and efficiency of the participation, narrowing the gap between the strength of competitive sports and the U.S, enriching the spirit of Chinese sports and strengthening the sports and cultural exchanges with the outside world. China's participation in the Summer Olympics is still facing the "unbalanced, inadequate" development dilemma, manifested in the unbalanced overall development of Olympic events, unsufficient development of collective ball games, basic events as well as the potential advantage events. Looking into the future, we should adhere to the right path while being innovative to improve the new mechanism with multi-track coexistence based on the new national-wide system; we should seize the development opportunity of science and technology to create a new advantage for competitive sports supported by the new quality productive forces; we should consolidate the foundation to optimize the diversified talent cultivation system with the integration of sports and education as the focus; and we should seek a comprehensive approach to be strong in the implementation to promote the development strategy focusing on "reasonable growth in quantity" and "effective improvement in quality" practice.