Compared with V 2 O 5 −WO 3 /TiO 2 , the ceria catalyst supported on sulfated zirconia (referred to as CeSZ) shows a superior alkali resistance for selective catalytic reduction of NO in flue gases. It reveals an unexpected result that a moderate amount of potassium (normally considered as SCR poisons) could even enhance the activity of CeSZ catalyst. To investigate this exceptional phenomenon, we studied the surface acid−base properties of CeSZ catalysts with different amounts of K and their influences on SCR performances. Although K resulted in a sharp decrease in Brønsted acid sites, the total acidity, especially strong acidity, barely changed when K/Ce was less than 0.4. It was proposed that a small amount of potassium could initially alter some Brønsted acid sites to Lewis ones, therefore retaining the majority of total acidity. Moreover, increased surface basicity due to K depositing led to an enhancement in NO chemisorption and oxidation, which is beneficial to the SCR process via the reaction of NO 2 and NO x ad-species with adsorbed NH 3 species. This explains why the SCR catalytic activity was improved at lower temperature for CeSZ catalysts after K depositing. Therefore, the catalytic activity and reaction temperature window of CeSZ catalyst could be controlled by simply tuning the surface acid/base sites, which may give some inspiration to improve the catalytic activity and poisoning tolerance.