Objective To determine the age and gender distribution of circulating monocyte subsets in Chinese healthy adults. Methods Consecutively enrolled 175 adults who underwent routine medical examination in this hospital in May 2012. Sodium citrate anticoagulated blood was collected from all subjects to examine monocyte subsets by flow cytometry. Results 45 patients were ruled out because of potential health issues. The counts and percentages of classic CD14⁺⁺CD16^- monocytes (P=0.091 and P=0.701, respectively), intermediate CD14⁺⁺CD16⁺ monocytes (P=0.082 and P=0.474, respectively), non-classic CD14⁺CD16⁺⁺ monocytes (P=0.085 and P=0.756, respectively) had no significant differences between men and women. There was no obvious age-dependent changes in the counts and percentages of classic and non-classic monocytes. The counts of intermediate monocytes increased with age [The counts of cells in the youth groups were 11 (6.5, 13.5); in the middle-aged group was 9.5 (7.0, 18.0); in the elderly-aged group was 9(7.0, 17.5), P=0.012] and the percentages of intermediate monocytes had borderline statistical difference among different age tertiles. Conclusions This study demonstrates the age and gender distributions of monocyte subset in healthy Chinese adults, which may provide a basis for future human monocyte targeted researches.