Objective  To study the structure and characteristics of national policies on the containment of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in China for providing a reference to the improvement of relevant policy - making.

  Methods  By searching websites of governmental agencies and China National Knowledge Infrastructure, we retrieved all AMR containment-related documents issued from January 2004 through July 2020. Using the content analysis method, we conducted textual quantitative analysis on 75 policy documents issued by government agencies with Nvivo 12 software.

  Results  Of the 75 policy documents, 22, 51, and 2 were about AMR containment in health, agriculture, and environment sectors. From the text of the 75 documents, totally 316 policy tool - related item elements were coded. Of the 316 item elements, 175, 130, and 11 corresponded to policy items involving health, agriculture, and environment sectors; in terms of policy tool category, 155 item elements belong to the compulsory category and 86, 17, 49, and 9 belong to categories of capability construction, value judgment, incentive, and innovation promotion, respectively.

  Conclusion  In China, the national AMR containment - related policies are under the government administration; the policies act mainly on health and agriculture sectors and on aspects of mandatory management and capability construction. More policy tools need to be developed for environment - related AMR containment and in the categories of value judgment and innovation promotion.