Abstract: Numerical weather prediction (NWP) is the core technology of weather forecast and disaster prevention and mitigation. China's NWP research and operational applications have been attached great importance by the meteorological society. Great achievements have been made in the theories, methods and numerical model developments in China, which have a wide range of international impacts. The scientific and technological progresses of NWP since 1949 was summarized. The main part of this paper then devotes to presenting the current status and recent progresses of the domestically developed NWP system, i.e., GRAPES (Global Regional Assimilation and PrEdiction System). In the recent 10 years, a new operational NWP system has been established through independent research and development. This system includes both regional and global deterministic and ensemble prediction models with the resolutions ranging from 3 to 10 km for regional and 25 to 50 km for global forecasts. New progresses have been made in dynamic core, 4-dimensional variational assimilation and satellite data assimilation. The GRAPES system also is extended to drive the atmospheric chemistry model and ocean wave model.