Abstract: Under the high attention and strategic deployment of the Communist Party and the government of China, China has always regarded maternal and child health as the core area of basic people’s livelihood guarantee and continuously promoted the construction of the critical maternal rescue system. As of March 2024, a total of 3 491 critical maternal rescue centers covering provincial, municipal and county administrative regions across the whole country have been established, forming a hierarchical and coordinated rescue system. The rescue success rate of critical pregnant women has remained above 99% consistently. Although the construction of China’s critical maternal rescue system in China still faces numerous challenges currently, such as uneven distribution of medical resources, information sharing barriers, unsmooth referral channels and inadequate multi-disciplinary cooperation mechanisms, which have restricted the further improvement and upgrading of the system to some extent. However, simultaneously, with the strong support of national policies, steady growth of China’s economy, remarkable development of informatization construction, continuous improvement of maternal and child health service system, and gradual advancement of the construction of medical alliances and medical communities, unprecedented development opportunities have been brought to the construction of the critical maternal rescue system. In the future, it is necessary to continuously improve the construction of the rescue system by deepening the reform of institutional mechanism, integrating artificial intelligence and big data technology, optimizing the regional coordinated rescue network and enhancing the rescue efficiency, so as to ultimately achieve the full−course guarantee of the safety of mothers and infants.