Growth reflects the general condition of society, and is a measure of the nutritional and hygienic status of a population [1, 2]. Nutrition is one of the most important components of children’s well-being [3]. The Chinese government attaches great importance to children’s health and development, with a clear statement and consistent practice for “Children are the future and hope of the motherland”. In the past decades, China has made outstanding progress in development goals related to reducing maternal and child mortality [4]. In 1975, China launched its first national child growth survey, namely, the National Survey on Physical Growth and Development of Children (NSPGDC) [5]. Thereafter, every 10 years, China conducts a new round of national surveys in the same survey cities, and five rounds of the NSPGDC were conducted between 1975 and 2015. To meet the development needs of different historical periods, some sub-projects were added to the 1985 NSPGDC and subsequent surveys (Fig. 1). The NSPGDC series was the first large-scale national special survey on children’s growth, development and nutrition, with fixed survey period (every 10 years), fixed survey regions (nine cities of China) and fixed survey method (design and content); and the data of any subsequent survey are comparable to previous survey data, which provides an important reference for developing national health strategies and the primary data for establishing growth standards and growth curves for Chinese children [6, 7].