A circular knitting machine for knitting a pile fabric with short stitch length, the circular knitting machine includes a needle dial, a needle bed, a gap formed by the needle dial and the needle bed, knitting needles on the needle dial, crochet needles on the needle bed, a cutter holder, and cutters on the cutter holder and facing the gap. Movement tracks of the crochet needles are crisscrossed with movement tracks of the knitting needles and movement tracks of the cutters. Each of the crochet needles has a butt portion, a hook portion, and a protruding shoulder portion between the butt portion and the hook portion, the protruding shoulder portion forms an eyelet, and the protruding shoulder portion is configured to be capable of expanding a yarn loop on the crochet needles to facilitate the cutters to cut the yarn loop at the eyelet to form a pile.