Abstract: Taking targeted measures of social assistance system is an inevitable requirement of the new period, an effective route of upgrading governance capabilities, and an important part of modernizing governance in the new era of China. Based on the framework of state governance and the element of targeted governance, this article puts forward a framework to analyze the social assistance policy. Firstly it introduces the institutional framework of social assistance, the government established the framework of "8+1". Then it discusses the targeted governance of social assistance system from the aspects of current situation, challenges and improving path in the new era of China. In current situation, China's social assistance system and the governance capability are improving, presenting a good situation of macroscopic, mesoscopic, microscopic and multi-level parallel optimization. In the challenging aspect, it is found that the social assistance system has many deficiencies with lots of challenges in seven dimensions, including subjection, objection, content, level, handling, and support, etc. In summary, it is suggested that the Chinese government should improve the level of social assistance system and the targeted governance basing on the policy element framework.