Provided is a method for recycling and refreshing a cathode material, a refreshed cathode material and a lithium ion battery. The method for recycling and refreshing the cathode material includes: 1) a cathode material recycled from a waste battery is mixed with a manganiferous salt solution; 2) an alkali aqueous solution is added to the mixture to react to obtain a manganese hydroxide coating cathode material; and 3) the manganese hydroxide coating cathode material is sintered with a lithium resource to obtain a refreshed cathode material. The refreshed cathode material has no obvious impurity phase and has good crystallinity, high initial charge-discharge efficiency and good cycling performance.