A spaceborne Doppler wind lidar is an efficient active detection device that can be used to obtain the global three-dimensional atmospheric wind field in global scale. It is able to make up for the weakness of passive sensing of meteorological satellites. The review for its requirements and progress indicates important scientific significance. First, this study describes the urgent needs for three-dimensional wind fields in various fields such as accuracy improvement of weather forecast, numerical weather forecast model assimilation, and global climate change research. Then, it reviews the development history of spaceborne wind lidar based on three schemes of coherent detection, direct detection and hybrid detection, and summarizes the challenges of the present spaceborne wind lidar. After that, according to the research progress of Chinese Doppler wind lidar, this paper summarizes the current seven key and unsolved technologies of Chinese spaceborne wind lidar. Finally, it is suggested that the spaceborne hybrid wind lidar with the advantages of both coherent detection and direct detection can well reduce the research and fabrication cost and significantly enhance the detection accuracy of atmospheric vertical wind profiles, and the spaceborne hybrid wind lidar will be the future trend in the field of spaceborne wind lidar.