M & A was an important means to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and also an important way to improve the degree of industrial concentration and speed up the transformation of industrial development mode. As a direct embodiment of the efficiency of M & A, the performance of M & A has been widely concerned by scholars. This paper introduced the concept of M & A performance and motivation of M & A, used Citespace to analyze 749 papers on M & A performance from CNKI core journals from 2000 to 2020,The research focus and frontier of M & A performance a analyzed by keyword clustering and keyword variation, and analyzed the research results of external environment, internal environment, M & A characteristics and external intermediary agencies which affect M & A performance, Finally, the possible direction of future research was proposed.