Abstract: It is very important to identify manganese ore and manganese smelting slag for manganese ore import trade and environmental protection. Due to the similarity of elements in manganese smelting slag and some manganese ore, such as Mn, Si, Al, Mg, Ca and other impure elements, they cannot be identified only by the content of the elements. China's main imported manganese ore and the main manganese smelting slag samples were chosen as the research subject, which was studied by X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry(XRF), X-ray Diffraction(XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy(FTIR). The silicon content of the manganese slag is relatively high, whereas the calcium content of the water quenching slag and air cooling slag are relatively high. The phase characteristics of manganese ore include pyrolusite, manganese oxide, bixbyite, rhodochrosite, among others. The phase characteristics of manganese smelting slag include iron silicate and tephroite because of being smelted. The characteristics of infrared absorption show that manganese ore has two strong absorption bands in the range of 600-400 cm^-1, and dependently or at the same time has infrared characteristic peaks at 1420 cm^-1. Manganese smelting slag has widely strong infrared characteristic peaks at around 960 cm^-1. The phase spectrogram database of imported manganese ore and manganese smelting slag in China has now been established. Primary differences between the manganese ore and smelting slag were determined ultimately, and were proved by FTIR.