Using the biomass material chitosan as a precursor and potassium citrate (PC) as a substitute for traditional corrosive activators such as KOH and ZnCl2, a chitosan-based porous carbon material with high specific surface area was successfully prepared and used as a support for the catalytic acetylene acetoxylation reaction. By controlling the PC content and the calcination temperature, chitosan-based porous carbon with a suitable pore structure and abundant surface oxygen functional groups was obtained. The inductively coupled plasma analysis confirmed that the zinc content of the 0.9Zn/CS-PC1-800 catalyst was about 14 wt%, and the acetic acid conversion reached 81%. Furthermore, the scanning electron microscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis showed that the catalyst carrier was mesoporous carbon material, and different PC content formed different pore size distribution at different calcination temperatures. In addition, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis demonstrated that the content of O in chitosan- based porous carbon was rich, and PC consumed the O content on the surface of carbon materials during activation. Because O content and pore size structure on carrier surface are closely related to acetic acid conversion, reasonable PC content and calcination temperature are very important for acetic acid conversion.