Abstract: Abstract: The institutional construction of Chinas social work is speeding up. It has been a governmentdominated process with participation of social work educators and practitioners as well as the action and process of designing, configuring and systemizing social work institutions to bring them into play. This study emphasizes the contribution of the government and social work educators to constructing social work institutions, points to the integrative and practical characteristics of the institutional construction, and argues that it is important to build social work manpower institutions and promote institutional construction for utilizing and motivating the professionals. The article summarizes the characteristics of social work institutional construction in China: Partygovernment domination with professional guidance, unbalanced development with local experiments, optionality of local governments, expansion through pilot programs and advocacy, nonsystemization under integrative planning, etc. The article concludes that the integrative social work institutional construction should be achieved through continuous advancement and collaborations among government sectors as well as between the government and social forces.

Key words:  social work in China, institutional construction, integrative construction