The Proficiency Standards and Testing Guideline for Chinese National Sign Language are the first national document in China to provide standards and specifications for assessing communicative competence in sign language. It specifies the name, nature, purpose, and target population of the test, the scope, content, format, and duration, as well as the item types, sample items, and scoring criteria. The development of the document was guided by four principles: reflecting the linguistic characteristics of sign language, adopting an international perspective, taking account of China’s national context, and facilitating technology-enabled implementation. Drawing primarily on the principles of the approaches set out in the 2001 edition of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR), as well as the 2018 Companion Volume, it establishes a three-dimensional proficiency framework encompassing sign language comprehension, expression, and communication abilities. Assessment is administered across five dimensions — vocabulary, sentence, discourse, topic, and signing rate — yielding a three-level, six-grade proficiency scale. In addition, sample test forms with high reliability and validity have been developed, and a preliminary test item bank has been established. Nevertheless, the relatively insufficient depth of ontological research of Chinese sign language has imposed certain constraints on the development process, and several issues in the testing procedure remain to be further investigated and resolved.