Find the standard,
before it finds you
Planning practice in China runs on standards: national standards (GB, mandatory; GB/T, recommended), sector standards (TD, CH, CJJ and others), and a steady stream of technical guides issued with each planning cycle. Two habits pay off: always check whether a standard is current or superseded, and watch the draft (征求意见稿) sections — that is where the next cycle's rules appear first. The platforms below make both possible, with free full texts for most documents.
The single most important standards site for this field. Track drafts open for comment, browse every current natural-resources standard, and download full texts — including city-design guides and urban built-up area delimitation criteria.
The SAMR platform for reading mandatory and recommended national standards (GB/GB/T) online. If a planning deliverable cites a GB number, verify the current version here before quoting it.
Cross-sector search for all Chinese standards — national, sector, and local — with status flags (current, revised, withdrawn). Useful when a project touches standards beyond natural resources.
Compilation guidelines for provincial and municipal territorial spatial master plans, "double evaluation" instructions, and the technical regulations that standards formally codify later.
The international committee for geographic information standards. Chinese national standards increasingly harmonize with TC 211 — knowing both vocabularies makes bilingual project work far smoother.
Construction-industry standards (CJJ, GB/50-series) governing detailed planning deliverables, urban design, and municipal engineering — the companion shelf to MNR's planning standards.
Practitioners annotate and explain newly released standards in the Guoturen document library, and the AI knowledge base lets you query standard texts conversationally, with cited clauses.