Since the 3^rd Plenary Session of the 11^th Central Committee of CPC, China has embarked on an upsurge of reform in full swing, and the greatest practice of socialist market economy gave birth to a brand-new intermediary in China — the appraisal profession. In 1988, assets evaluation of the Sino-foreign JV project of Dalian Mill marked the development prelude of the emerging appraisal profession in the arena of Chinese economy. On November 16^th, 1991, the State Council promulgated the Practice Directions for Regulating Appraisal of State-owned Assets in the form of Premier’s Decree No.91, which became the fundamental legal basis of the development of the appraisal profession.

Since its birth in 1988, the appraisal profession has undergone many rounds of changes in its regulation patterns. It witnessed a transitional period from exclusively administrative regulation to the combination of administrative and self-disciplinary regulation, from relative separation of administrative and self-disciplinary regulation to the present regulation pattern in which administrative regulation on the part of the government is flexibly combined with self-disciplinary regulation of professional associations and self-consummation of appraisal firms. Appraisal firms have become independent institutions that are initiated and established by appraisers, seek self-development and assume their own risks due to a series of reforms carried out by the appraisal profession, including professional rectification, split-off restructuring, cancellation of the project confirmation system in appraisal reports, and adoption of approval and filing system. In 1995, the appraisal profession started to implement practicing CPV examination system and designed the examination for jewelry valuation in 2003, thus gradually improving a sound access regulation system of practicing professionals.

 The appraisal profession is playing a key role in standardizing assets operation, maintaining economic order and promoting economic development, and has become a major force indispensable to the development of market economy in China. 19 years’ development of the appraisal profession saw profound changes in its service objects and business scopes with the former extended from entity of state-owned titles to that of diversified ownership titles and the latter expanded from traditional SOE restructuring to such emerging fields as enterprise value appraisal of profit-making abilities including equity, financial assets evaluation and forest resource assets evaluation.

While catering to the needs of SOE reform and economic development, the appraisal profession also witnessed its own increasing maturity in that it has preliminarily established the legal framework of the appraisal profession with Chinese characteristics, launched the valuation standards system to regulate professional practices in an all-round way, set up a regulation and supervision system which gives equal weight to both administrative supervision and professional self-discipline, developed a team of appraisal firms which conduct professional practice according to law and business operations independently, and cultivated a full-scale team of CPVs who are equipped with professional competence.

At present, under the supervision and regulation of MOF, there are altogether 32000 CPVs, 3500 appraisal firms and about 80,000 practitioners in the appraisal profession.