China has the largest social insurance system in the world covering nearly 1.4 billion people and includes old-age, medical, work injury, maternity and unemployment insurance schemes. There are more than 8,000 social insurance agencies at and above the county level in China, with nearly 180,000 staff, undertaking 1.99 billion individual service transactions annually. Due to historical reasons, many branch-based operational agencies follow different management and service standards, and do not even have a unified name. This practice is inefficient and errors easily occur.

It is therefore necessary to transform from the previous experience-based services to standardized services, consolidate administration and service resources and improve the overall efficiency of social insurance operations. Standardization is an effective tool for the general public to exercise supervision and to help improve the efficiency of the administration and services. Standardization also provides an open and transparent means of measurement to evaluate work performance.

After 5 years of hard work, a preliminary social insurance standard system is in place, with 11 national standards and 3 industrial standards issued so far, which are applied nationwide.