China has been developing food safety risk assessment system in accordance with Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China since 2009. Some significant progress has been made on risk assessment basis including practical guidelines, original data, applicable models and methodologies, on which risk assessment practices were carried out last decade. These practices in response to regulatory requirements provided risk-based support for governmental risk management and played important roles in improving science-based decision-makings in food safety administration. But working mechanism, fundamental data and scientific capacity in risk assessment need to be improved. Both the scientific progress in 21th century and scientific demands from national food safety governance have much pressure on risk assessment. China will face many challenges when further developing food safety risk assessment in the future, including how to improve risk assessment quality, how to apply advanced science in risk assessment and to integrate ‘big data' derived from new technologies, and how to contribute to international harmonization of risk assessment methodology.