During 1995∼2000, investigations were carried out four times on the safety conditions of pressure-bearing equipments in petrochemical enterprises in China. As a result, it is found that many failure cases are related to elevated or high temperature environment. Because the service conditions of Chinese pressure vessels and process characteristics of petrochemical enterprises are somewhat different from those of the other countries, it is a challenge to set up Chinese standard for high-temperature structural integrity assessment, and these research work was started at 2000, namely the early stage of “10th five-year plan” (from 2000 to 2005), during which Hefei General Machinery Research Institute (HGMRI), East China University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University of Technology, etc. have accumulated a lot of data on high-temperature performance of typical steels, set up various life prediction and damage assessment models, preliminarily formed the technical methods for defect safety assessment of high-temperature in-service pressure vessels, and thus lay a foundation for establishment of Chinese high-temperature defect assessment code. In this paper the present status, existing problems and future development direction of China are described in the aspect of non destructive test (NDT) of elevated and high-temperature defects, integrity assessment of defect-containing structures, life prediction and damage assessment etc.Copyright © 2008 by ASME