The Data Bank of Chinese Hematopoietic Stem Cell Donors (Chinese Marrow Donor Program, CMDP) is operated under the guidance of Red Cross Society of China. It is in charge of the administration of propagation, organisation, mobilisation of volunteers, and the standardisation of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing, preliminary search, clinical transplantation, and all related activities in unrelated stem cell transplantation in China. The Advisor Committee—composed by experts in the fields of haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), HLA typing, legislation, information technology and ethics—guides the development of the CMDP. The budget of CMDP mainly comes from funds of National Charity Lottery and other charities. Up to the end of 2008, 31 branch registries and HLA-typing laboratories, five high-resolution laboratories, and one quality-control laboratory were established and authorised. There are more than 950 000 donors in our data pool. The CMDP has established clinical relationship with over 100 hospitals. More than 1100 CMDP donors have donated peripheral blood stem cells to patients successfully. The CMDP has also signed cooperation agreement with five of the seven major cord blood banks in mainland China. As a result, there are over 30 000 units of cord blood available for searching in our system. This will improve the matching and using rate of cord blood. The emergence of the CMDP has filled a void in mainland China’s contribution to clinical HSCT and donor search worldwide. It has performed preliminary searches for overseas patients including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, United States, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Korea and Singapore, and over 50 donations have been completed.