Traditional Chinese paper folding concentrates mainly on objects like boats or hats rather than the animals and flowers of Japanese origami.

A recent innovation is from the Golden Venture migrants where large representational objects are made from modular forms.

In China, traditional funerals include burning folded paper, most often representations of gold nuggets (yuanbao).

This practice probably started when papers gradually become popular and cheaper in China, and it seems to have become quite common during the Song dynasty (905–1125 CE).

In 1993, a group of Chinese refugees were detained on the ship Golden Venture and held in an American prison, where they began making elaborate models combining traditional Chinese modular paperfolding (utilizing materials such as magazine covers) with a form of papier-mâché (using toilet tissue); these models were given to those helping the refugees and sold at charity fundraisers.