Abstract: <DIV>Lithium metal and lithium salts have a wide application prospect in the new energy and chemical industries.Although there are large amount of lithium resources in China with a character of high ratio of magnesium to lithium,the effective techniques for the separation and recovery of lithium and magnesium from brines are still scare.Presently,the most important for the rapid development of national economy is to carry out the separation of lithium and magnesium as well as rational development and utilization of lithium resources.Progress of extractive methods,such as precipitation method,absorption method,extraction method,and nano-filtration membrane separation technique etc.,in terms of magnesium and li-thium &nbsp;separation and recovery were summaried,advantages and disadvantages of each method were also compared.Reference for the exploiting of lithium resourse from salt lake was provided.At last,future research priority and direction of magnesium-lithium separation were pointed out.</DIV>