During last three decades, China experienced rapid development of industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural intensification, resulting in entrance of large quantities of metal pollutants into rural and urban soil environment through multiple pathways, causing agricultrual and industrial land pollution. Both basic and technological reseraches for either better understanding of biogeochemistry or for development of risk reduction technology, of toxic metals in soil and groundwater are urgently required for safeguard of food quality and human health.

In the 1970s, China soil environmental protection focused on preventing metal pollution of the agricultural soil in sewage irrigated areas. In the 1980s, significant progress was made in the research on pollution control of heavy metals, especially arsenic and chromium. In the early 1990s, the soil metal background values on a national scale and its regional differentiation were determined. The National Soil Environmental Quality Standard was enacted in 1995 to provide a basis for soil environmental management and metal pollution prevention in particular, and the research on phytoremediation of metal polluted soil was started in the mid-1990s. From the twenty-first century, the National “973” Program for basic research, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and the Knowledge Innovation Projects of Chinese Academy of Sciences funded many research projects on soil metal biogeochemistry, soil environmental quality evolution and soil risk assessment. Remediation technologies for metal polluted site soil and groundwater were embraced into the National “863” Program for “Hi-Tech” development. Ten years ago, a national-wide soil pollution survey and prevention project was carried out, and the soil pollution status at a national scale was mapped. These projects stimulated the national development of soil pollution risk management and remediation, including the preliminary establishment of risk reduction technology systems of heavy metals-polluted soil and groundwater, such as stabilisation, oxidation/reduction, washing, reactive barrier, electrodynamics, phytoremediation, microbial remediation, and combination technoloies.

In the future, the continuing implementation of “China Action Plan for Soil Pollution Prevention and Control” and the “National Key Research and Development Program” will further and greatly promote reserach and development of biogeochemistry knowledge and risk reduction technology of metal pollutants, improve the capacity for soil environmental governance and effectively enhance China’s industrial development in the soil remediation.