A smart society is an important component of the digital China strategy; however, the construction of the smart society currently faces practical challenges. Studying a systematic construction method for the smart society will cultivate new competitive advantages for China, promote Chinese path to modernization, and realize the digital China strategy. This study aims to explore methods for building a new type of smart society and maximizing the benefits of social resources. It analyzes the current status and development trends of smart society construction and summarizes the prominent problems including large investment in decentralized construction, low operational efficiency, and uneven development. Following a systems engineering method, an overall architecture for the systematic construction of the smart society is proposed. The architecture adopts a new "1+N+X" model that focuses on coordinating information infrastructure resources of the entire society to build a smart society system capability support platform, thus to expand various business applications accordingly. Moreover, we propose the following suggestions: (1) strengthening top-level design to build a system capability support platform that integrates network, cloud, data, control, and intelligence, thereby forming a basic digital base for the smart society; (2) adopting a new model of systematic construction to promote the sustainable development of smart society construction through efficient operation; (3) establishing a comprehensive standards and regulations system for the smart society; and (4) providing solid theoretical, technical, and talent support for the systematic construction of the smart society by building a national laboratory for digital systems engineering of the smart society.