The dispute of whether there was a great glacial sheet on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau started at the beginning of the 1920s and has lasted for more than 80 years. The subjects of dispute include the question whether there was a great glacial sheet covering the whole plateau and small glacial sheets localy as well their formation ages and influence on the global climatic change. The dispute involved three stages;from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1940s, the dispute was mainly between a few explorers from western countries, but for lack of evidences, it was difficult to carry out the discussion; from the 1950s to 1970s, the hypothesis of the absence of the great glacial sheets proposed mainly by the Chinese scholars; the period from the 1980s up to now has witnessed a culmination of dispute when there have been numerous Chines and foreign scholars who take part in the dispute and published a few hundred papers on this subject. It is predicted that in the near future the dispute will calm down. There will appear a new research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau upsurge and the research will enter a new era when a serier of new theories on the history of geological evolution of Tibet and Asia and is influences on the natural environment and ecological system of East Asia.