Since the concept of National Park in China was put forward in 2013, the institutional reform for building China’s national park system has made important progress and become the fastest and the most iconic comprehensive reform in the entire reform of the ecological civilization system. In the past five years, China has completed a top-down design, clarified a management system, initiated relevant legislative procedures, and built the basic framework for national park system through pilot programs. There are four important experiences in the institutional reform. The first is the combination of high-level leadership and system innovation. The second is pilot first followed by dynamic adjustment. The third is the problem oriented and top-down design. The fourth is encouraging stakeholder participation to improve governance system. Though progress has been made, the reform still faces many challenges and difficulties, and has a long way to go. National park potential construction areas often have large populations, complex land ownership patterns, numerous stakeholders, lack of multi-participation mechanisms, and weak local management capabilities. In the future, based on the experiences of institutional reform, we should insist on the correct reform orientation, further expand openness and innovate thinking, and follow the basic principles of system promotion, classification guidance, and phased implementation. We should combine top-down design with pilot programs, to establish national park system legally, scientifically, democratically and openly, to accelerate national park legislation, to establish a modern governance system, and to explore value realization mechanism of ecological products produced in national parks. In this way, the natural protected areas system with national parks as the backbone will be protected as a whole, the interests of the people will be maximized, and the harmonious development between man and nature will be realized.