This article elaborates on the development of various personality assessment tools from its initial stage in China. During the initial period after the resumption of scientific psychological research in China, the influence of Western theories and measures of personality was strong. With few local instruments available, most psychologists depended on the importation of well-developed Western personality tests. In the 1970s, major instruments such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) were translated and used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. With the opening of mainland China to Western psychology after 1978, objective psychological assessment represented the acme of science. This article reveals that in the attempt to provide culturally relevant personality assessment tools, Chinese psychologists began to develop indigenous measures to study Chinese personality and its latent structure in the 1980s. It also elaborates on the evolvement of The Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI).