Abstract: This paper described the RM 2010—Beijing international symposium on reference materials, which is the largest conference in the history about reference materials international conference. The symposium was hosted by National Institute of Metrology P. R. China and supported by China Association for Instrumental Analysis and Chinese Society for Measurement. The themes of the symposium were mainly the current situation, future development trend, challenges of reference materials. The main themes included the relationships between the reference materials, environmental protection, international business and so on, the preparation, measurement methods and challenges for reference materials, current situations for national and international reference materials. The sessions of the symposium included about public security and health care, advanced materials for energy technology and environmental protection, developments and application of international reference materials, general analytical technology. The achievements in Chinese reference materials were presented through this conference and promoted the status of China about development of reference materials. The delegates communicated for the challenges and problems during the preparation for the reference materials. In this paper, we also summarized the main themes and the situation and application of Chinese reference materials, especially geological reference materials. Up to end of 2010, the totally 6011 kinds of reference materials in China consists of 1701 first grade and 4310 second grade certified national reference materials, covering with steel, inorganic and industrial materials and so on. The numbers of reference materials reached international advanced level, however, there are some problems about lack of some species and categories along with unreasonable structure. The reference materials are short of in some important research fields as new resource, new energy, new materials, biology, clinical medicine, nonferrous metals, food and organic contaminations.