The invention discloses a laser cleaning process monitoring method based on an acoustic emission technology. A monitoring system is composed of a near-infrared nanosecond optical fiber laser processing system, a data acquisition card, preamplifiers, a signal cable and acoustic emission sensors. According to the principle of the laser cleaning process monitoring method, the cleaning effect is subjected to real-time and non-destructive monitoring based on the laser cleaning process of the acoustic emission technology; a mutual mathematical relation between the cleaning effect (the quantity of residual rust materials on the surfaces of workpieces) and the amplitude of acoustic emission signals is obtained, setting of laser processing parameters is controlled in real time, and thus laser cleaning is subjected to online and non-destructive monitoring; besides, the acoustic emission sensors are directly arranged on the surfaces of rust layers of the workpieces, the interference of other signals is reduced, and the reliability of the collected acoustic emission signals is improved. According to the monitoring system and method, the structure and use are very simple and reasonable, the precision is high, the performance is stable, the problem that an existing laser cleaning technology does not have a real-time detection function is solved, and the cleaning quality and efficiency are improved.