Black carbon (BC) aerosol recently is a very active research topic, because it has similar effect to global climate warming with green house gases due to its ability of absorbing solar and atmospheric radiation. The emission and concentration of BC aerosol in China are higher than those in other regions of the same latitude. Therefore,more attention has been paid to the BC aerosol in China by scientists than in other countries. The recent progress of BC aerosol research is presented in the two review papers due to length limitation. The emission, removal and concentration of BC aerosol are described in this paper, and the climate effect and developing research domain are discussed in our companion paper. The emission amount of China in 2000 was 1 050 Gg, which is lower than 1 342Gg in 1995. The reduction in BC emission can be resulted partly due to energy change, including larger use of gas rather than raw coal. The atmospheric concentration of BC in cities was a little higher than in the cities overseas, such as in Beijing (3.3~25.6 μg/m3), Xian (0.5~101.3 μg/m3), etc. The BC concentration in the sediments from the South China Sea is also shown. In the present paper, we compare and analyze the emission and concentration of BC among China and other regions of the world, and the uncertainty in BC aerosol research is also discussed.