China is a country with high incidence of gastrointestinal (GI) cancer. Gastric cancer, esophageal cancer and colon cancer seriously threaten the health of people, and leads to heavy medical burdens. This review discusses the current screening protocol of GI cancer and pancreatic cancer. It also interprets the relevant policies issued by the state in recent years, and evaluates the effects of new technologies such as serum pepsinogen combined with gastrin in detecting gastric cancer, fecal and blood gene detection for colon cancer, and "serum liquid biopsy" of pancreatic cancer for early cancer screening. We also point out the difficulties and challenges in cancer screening at early stage, and the significance of promoting early cancer screening to reduce the mortality of GI cancer in China.