The purpose of this paper is to critically review two studies conducted ten years apart to examine the roles and responsibilities of school principals in China. Data of one study were collected from seven provinces of south China while those of the other study were mainly from Changsha area, Hunan Province. Though the same survey instrument was used in both studies for data collection, because of time and location differences, direct comparison of findings tend to be inappropriate. Longitudinal approach of school leadership studies in the future is recommended. Results of this review showed that principals in these two studies had unbalanced workload in distributing their effort in dealing with daily school businesses. The research approaches and findings of these two studies have significant implications for planning of educational leadership programs, planning of daily school practices and planning for future research in school leadership.