Various zinc compounds were used as the catalysts for the synthesis of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) from methyl carbarnate (MC) and methanol in a batch reactor. Among them, ZnCl2 showed the highest catalytic activity and led to the DMC yield of 33.6% under the optimal conditions. In addition, a possible reaction mechanism was proposed based on Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) characterization results.