The project evaluation of the National Natural Science Foundation of China strictly implements the evaluation principle of "relying on experts, promoting democracy, supporting the best, being fair and reasonable", and adopts a two-level evaluation system of peer experts exchange evaluation and expert evaluation group evaluation. At present, the peer expert system includes more than 80,000 peer communication review experts (including nearly 1,000 expert review teams of the Ministry of Science, and various expert review teams are set up as needed).

Peer review experts are distributed in universities and research institutes all over the country. The expert review group is composed of some scientists with high academic attainments, strong academic judgment, impartiality, decent style, enthusiasm for the work of science foundation and certain prestige. The term of office of the experts in the evaluation team is two years, and the re-election shall not exceed two terms, and each term shall be updated by about 50%. From 1986 to 2007, eleven expert review groups were established.