Citespace, a visualization-based analysis tool, has been used to analyze the literature data by visualizing the patterns and potential trends of a field. Previous studies show that when used for analyzing the literature in Chinese, Citespace could only conduct very basic analysis, different from its use in analyzing the literature data in English. To address this limitation, this study presents an approach to improving the use of Citespace for effective analysis of literature data in Chinese. The approach employs data-processing and data-analysis scripts in data collection, knowledge map generation, and interpretation steps to improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of analysis of literature data in Chinese. An empirical evaluation has been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.