At the dawn of the twenty-first century, as China's society and economy continue to develop and higher education undergoes further reform, higher education teacher training, which is crucial to building a teacher base in institutions of higher education and an effective means of tapping human resources, finds itself at an historic turning point. Where does it stand right now and what defines it? What are its main issues and difficulties and what are the main causes of these problems? How can it continue to develop as it adapts to the demand of the Sixteenth National People's Congress to create a society in which everybody is reasonably well-off and one in which study is the norm, and what does the future hold for it? To answer these questions, the Personnel Department of the Ministry of Education organized a network in 2002 to undertake a special nationwide survey of higher education teacher training. This article reports the findings of that survey. The survey was conducted through questionnaires, interviews, and books and reference materials. The survey revealed that very good progress has been made in higher education teacher training since 1999. Government at all levels has attached greater importance to it, with higher education institutions augmenting their teacher training to varying degrees. It is evident that training models have been expanded, guaranteeing a basic quality of training. Teachers' ideas are thus being transformed and their enthusiasm for undertaking further studies has been fired. No longer is government the mainstay of training mechanisms; government, schools, and individual teachers have already begun to work together in this area. All of these things have resulted in an improvement in the overall quality of teachers and the level of education and teaching. The survey also revealed that, despite the great achievements of higher education teacher training in China in recent years, research needs to be undertaken as a matter of some urgency into resolving some major, and basic, questions. Recommendations offered by the authors to improve China's current teacher training practices are also detailed in this article. (Contains 19 endnotes.)