As world’s first superconducting tokamak, EAST designed and developed in China has been put into operation officially at 2007. It has three distinctive features: non-circular cross-section, fully superconducting magnets and fully actively water cooled plasma facing components (PFCs), which will be beneficial to the exploration of the advanced steady-state plasma operation modes. Compared with International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project (ITER), EAST is smaller but similar in shape and equilibrium, yet more flexible. Its construction and physics research will provide direct experience for ITER and China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), and will ultimately contribute to the development of fusion energy. ITER is now under construction and is scheduled to begin commissioning in 2025, and start doing deuterium tritium fusion experiments in 2035. In the meantime, EAST will be one of the very few international devices that can be an important test bench for conducting ITER-like steady-state advanced plasma science and technology research. In recent years, the operation capacity of EAST auxiliary heating system is continuously improved, EAST is equipped with all ITER-related auxiliary heating and current driven systems. Together with a batch of new completed diagnosis and developed plasma control technology, EAST physics research ability has been greatly improved, and many experimental parameters obtained are close to the physical conditions required for the steady-state operation mode of the future reactor, which is a key step towards the experimental operation of future reactor By 2020, EAST has carried out 15 rounds of physical experiments, with a total discharge of 96914 shots.