Lightning is a natural phenomenon that seriously affects the natural environment and human activities. Therefore, it is of important social, economical and scientific value to detect the lightning effectively. Comparing with the developed countries, China has some gaps in the fields of lightning studying, forecasting and detecting. In this article, the mechanism of lightning and its influence are described. The present situation and the direction of lightning detecting technology at home and abroad are also analyzed. Several suggestions and issues have been proposed for constructing the national lightning detecting network.