China's external dependence on crude oil continues to rise, while the recovery rate continues to decline. Most of the remaining reservoirs found recently are harsh reservoirs with high temperature, high salinity and low permeability as well as high viscosity. Conventional surfactants such as petroleum sulfonate and alkylbenzene sulfonate can't meet the requirements for chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) due to their low activity and poor salt tolerance. The recent progress of novel surfactants, such as anionic-nonionic surfactants, dimeric (Gemini) and oligomeric surfactants, betaine type amphoteric surfactants, polymeric surfactants, Alkyl glycoside surfactants, viscoelastic surfactants, biosurfactants, mixtures of anionic/cationic surfactants are introduced. Furthermore, the differences of evaluation methods of surfactants for EOR between China and western countries are discussed. Finally, the development direction of surfactants for EOR is prospected.