Vegetation is an important component of terrestrial ecosystem as it supports other biological activities through the photosynthetic production. The biophysical and biochemical parameters of vegetation retrieved from satellite observations have been used extensively in studying the physiological states and growing conditions of vegetation that enabling global vegetation monitoring. Most of vegetation remote sensing applications using data from MODIS, Landsat, and Sentinel, though it would be beneficial, from the user perspective, to have an even more diverse data sources that not only secure data sustainability in case satellite retirement or sensor failure, but also enables research opportunities such as multi-sensor data fusion/integration and multi-angle remote sensing that can take advantage of observations acquired from different spaceborne sensors. In this regard, it would be worth to explore the potential of the large number of Chinese Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) that have been put into orbit over past decade. Here we summarized the recent advances in applying CEOS remote sensing of vegetation and its associated applications. We focused on the uncertainty and limitations for retrieving several commonly-used vegetation parameters by critically examining the case studies conducted over different vegetation types. Suggestions for research opportunities that can benefit from the additional data from CEOS are also provided. The hope is to provide the community an overview of what could be useful to their specific ecological, environmental and global change studies by leveraging the growing data volume from the orbiting CEOS sensors.