The multipurpose regional geochemical investigation in China revealed the extensive distribution of harmful elements, which has aroused attention among experts. Soil pollution will be harmful to ecological system and human health, and hence the formulation of the soil pollution grade standard is very important. In the National Soil Environment Protection Standard System, the soil pollution grade standard is a quantitative division for the pollution discovered in the investigation, the soil environment quality standard decides the critical value based on the affecting degree of pollution on the environment, and the soil pollution evaluation standard serves as the indexes for scientific researches on the existing problems. A unified grade division standard is adopted for the soil pollution, which divides the grade into national grade, river valley grade, provincial grade and prefecture or city grade. The formulation of the standard has experienced the from-part-to-overall understanding process and the from-overall-to-part policy-making process. It is the authors' leading thought that the soil pollution standard and the division of pollution grade should be first formulated on the basis of multipurpose regional geochemical survey.