ChiCTR: China's Clinical Trial Registry

Q: What does a ChiCTR registration number look like?

The current format is ChiCTR followed by a two-digit year and a sequential number, for example ChiCTR2200054321 .

ChiCTR (Chinese Clinical Trial Registry)

The Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR) is China's national clinical trial registry, established in 2005 by the Chinese Cochrane Centre/Chinese Evidence-Based Medicine Centre team at West China Hospital, Sichuan University, and accepted in 2007 as the fourth WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) Primary Registry, with the Ministry of Health of China (now the National Health Commission) designating it as China's official representative to that network. ChiCTR accepts registration of both interventional and observational studies, from China and internationally, and publishes the full WHO Trial Registration Data Set for each registered study.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 25 Aug 2026

Ask about ChiCTR (Chinese Clinical Trial Registry)

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Worked examples

Is an instance

A China-based investigator registers a randomized controlled trial in ChiCTR before enrollment, receiving an identifier such as ChiCTR2200054321.

Is an instance

A systematic reviewer searches ChiCTR directly, or via WHO's ICTRP portal, to find China-based trials on a given intervention that may not appear in ClinicalTrials.gov.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

Assuming ChiCTR registration is backed by a Chinese statutory reporting mandate equivalent to FDAAA 801 in the US -- as of ChiCTR's own published policies, its results-reporting terms of use are not backed by national law, unlike some other primary registries.

Not an instance

Treating ChiCTR as accepting only China-based trials -- it explicitly accepts prospective interventional trial registrations from investigators in any country.

ChiCTR, the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, is China’s national public clinical trial registry. It was established in 2005 by Professor Wu Taixiang and colleagues at the Chinese Cochrane Centre / Chinese Evidence-Based Medicine Centre, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, which continues to manage and fund the registry. In 2007, China’s Ministry of Health (predecessor to today’s National Health Commission) designated ChiCTR as the country’s representative registry, and it was accepted as the fourth Primary Registry in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) network.

Last verified August 25, 2026 against WHO’s ICTRP registry profile for ChiCTR and ChiCTR’s own about page.

WHO ICTRP Primary Registry Status

As a WHO ICTRP Primary Registry, ChiCTR’s registration procedures and required data fields comply with ICTRP and ICMJE standards, meaning a trial registered there satisfies the Declaration of Helsinki’s registration expectation and the trial-registration precondition ICMJE-member journals apply before considering a manuscript for publication — the same standing held by ClinicalTrials.gov, ISRCTN, and CTRI. ChiCTR publishes the full WHO Trial Registration Data Set for each study: primary and secondary outcomes, recruitment status, target sample size, and inclusion/exclusion criteria among them.

Scope and Who Can Register

ChiCTR accepts prospective registration of interventional trials from investigators in any country, not only China — unusually broad among national registries, most of which register only trials sponsored or conducted domestically. It also accepts a wider range of study types than some peer registries, including non-randomized and observational designs alongside standard randomized controlled trials.

Registration Number Format

ChiCTR’s registration-number format has changed over time. Its current format, used since roughly 2019, is ChiCTR followed by a two-digit year and a sequential number — for example, ChiCTR2200054321 or the earlier ChiCTR1900027785. WHO’s own registry-profile documentation also describes an older, still-referenced scheme that embedded a trial-type code in the identifier (for example, ChiCTR-TRC-xxxxxxxx, where TRC denoted a therapeutic randomized controlled trial, DT a diagnostic-test study, and PRC a prevention RCT); researchers encountering an older ChiCTR identifier in the published literature may see either format depending on the study’s original registration date.

A Notable Limit: No Statutory Reporting Backing

ChiCTR’s terms of use require summary results to be uploaded within one year of trial completion, but — per WHO’s own registry-profile assessment — this requirement is not currently backed by Chinese national law, unlike, for example, the results-reporting mandate ClinicalTrials.gov carries under FDAAA 801 for applicable US trials. Registration itself functions in practice mainly as a precondition for publication in ICMJE-compliant journals and as an ethical-transparency norm reinforced by China’s own research-integrity guidance, rather than as an independently enforced statutory obligation.

ChiCTR vs. Other Primary Registries

	ChiCTR	CTRI (India)	ClinicalTrials.gov
Operator	West China Hospital, Sichuan University	Indian Council of Medical Research	US National Library of Medicine (NIH)
WHO ICTRP status	Primary Registry (since 2007)	Primary Registry	Primary Registry
Statutory reporting mandate?	Not currently, per WHO’s assessment	Registration mandatory under the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019	Yes — FDAAA 801, 42 CFR Part 11, for applicable trials
Accepts non-domestic registrants?	Yes, explicitly	Primarily India-focused	Yes, for FDA-regulated trials regardless of location

Why This Matters for Research Administration

For research administrators coordinating multi-country trials that include China-based sites, ChiCTR registration is typically pursued to satisfy the target journal’s ICMJE-style registration requirement and China’s own research-ethics expectations, rather than a hard statutory reporting deadline of the kind FDAAA 801 imposes in the US — that distinction affects how much regulatory urgency to build into a China-site trial’s registration timeline relative to a US-regulated one, even though both should still be registered prospectively as good practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ChiCTR only for trials conducted in China?

No. ChiCTR explicitly accepts prospective interventional trial registrations from investigators in any country, though it is most commonly used for China-based studies.

Is ChiCTR a WHO-recognized registry?

Yes. It has been a WHO ICTRP Primary Registry since 2007, the fourth registry admitted to that network.

Does China legally require trial registration in ChiCTR?

Registration and results-reporting are required by ChiCTR’s own terms of use and are expected under China’s research-ethics norms and ICMJE publication requirements, but per WHO’s registry-profile assessment, the results-reporting requirement specifically is not currently backed by Chinese national law in the way FDAAA 801 backs ClinicalTrials.gov reporting in the US.

What does a ChiCTR registration number look like?

The current format is ChiCTR followed by a two-digit year and a sequential number, for example ChiCTR2200054321.

References

WHO ICTRP, “Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR)” primary-registry profile.
Wu T. et al., “Chinese Clinical Trial Registry: mission, responsibility and operation,” Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 2011.
Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, official site (chictr.org.cn): about page.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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