The social work profession has become a crucial political tool in China’s welfare and social service delivery system. In the Mid- to Long-term Planning of Building Social Work Professional Community (2011-2020), the state calls for 1,450,000 professional social workers by 2020. The social work licensure exam has become the most convenient path to create a large amount of professional social workers within a short period of time. Yet little is known about the characteristics and the professionalism of the social work license holders. This study aimed to examine the relationships between formal education, professionalism, and bureaucracy level experienced by the social work license holders from Shunde, Guangdong. The population of social work license holders in Shunde was invited to participate in an online survey. A total of 256 social workers completed the survey, representing sixteen percent of the population. Regression models were conducted to assess associations with level of professionalism, educational background, and experiences with organizational bureaucracy. The findings of this study demonstrated that the majority of social work license holders had not received social work formal education; formal education failed to predict greater professionalism; some aspects of bureaucracy were positively associated with some aspects of professionalism; and the professional socialization occurring in the field may be more effective than current formal social work education in cultivating practitioners’ attitudinal professionalism. Four suggestions were drawn from this study to promote social work professionalism: encourage social work educators and researchers to be more active in the field, create more social work positions/titles in the traditional social service delivery system, strengthen the functions of professional associations, and enforce continuing education among social work license holders. These suggestions may also be useful for other countries that lack educational resources to develop social work profession.