To be the abundant natural feedstock, CO2 chemical utilization has attracted the great interest in recent years. The key point to CO2 conversion is the activation of either CO2 or co-reactant at different conditions. To bear this in mind, our strategy is to activate CO2 either with the presence of electron-rich chemicals or by hydrogen, and to convert CO2 with a coupling reaction in some case. In this way, catalytic conversion of CO2 has been carried out by different methodology at our lab, including CO2 reforming of methane to syngas production over bifunctional catalysis, CO2 hydrogenation for methanol synthesis by nano-structured catalyst, and synthesis of carbonates from sub- or super-critical CO2 with a coupling of in situ water removal reaction or bifunctional catalyst system. Herein, this brief review presents the recent progress of catalytic CO2 conversion and aims to shed a light into the chemical fixation of CO2. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.