Formative assessment (FA) has been widely adopted in higher education instruction yet university teachers' use of FA is underexplored. In the Chinese context of teaching English writing to students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL), the use of FA is intriguing because of both the university students' generally poor English writing proficiency and the testing tradition. This study investigated the use of FA strategies among Chinese university EFL teachers in their writing instruction, with the foci on how they shared standards, elicited learning information, provided feedback, used self-/peer assessment, and how they perceived the purposes of their assessments. Three hundred and sixty-two teachers participated in our survey, and the results reveal that these teachers have used a limited range of FA strategies and that their implementation of these strategies is generally weak. They seldom used such strategies as eliciting information and student self-/peer assessment, but placed a great emphasis on providing feedback. The study profiled three distinct levels of FA use among the respondents: occasional, moderate and frequent. It also identified three, out of five, background variables that most contributed to teachers' FA use. These findings have implications for teacher professional development, use of FA in higher education, and assessment reform policies.