China Water Resources

Recommendations on flood attribute cognition and flood control, flood utilization and flood tailoring

Practice and effects of “3+1” standardized construction and management mode for rural water supply

To promote the high-quality development of rural water supply and consolidate the water conservancy foundation for rural revitalization across the board, China has issued a series of policy documents to fully implement the “3+1” standardized construction and management mode, which comprises the integration of urban-rural water supply, the scaling up of centralized water supply, the normalization of small-scale water supply, and the professionalization of county-level unified management. Water conservancy departments at all levels, in coordination with relevant departments, conscientiously implement and arrange the decisions of the Party Central Committee and the State Council. Through systematic measures such as scientifically formulating development plans, improving technical standard systems, perfecting policies and regulations, advancing categorized project construction, promoting county-level unified management, strengthening water quality safety control and emergency water supply support, and popularizing practical technologies and equipment, they have accelerated the construction of a rural water supply guarantee system that meets the requirements of “rural areas basically having modern living conditions”. By the end of 2025, the national rural tap water coverage rate, the proportion of the rural population covered by largescale water supply projects, and the proportion of county-level unified management have continued to rise. The rural water supply framework has gradually improved, and the capacity to guarantee drinking water safety has been significantly enhanced. By analyzing the practice and effects of implementing the “3+1” standardized construction and management mode for rural water supply, this paper proposes targeted optimization and improvement paths for deepening long-term standardized management and strengthening the bottom-line guarantee of small-scale water supply. It aims to clarify the shortcomings and directions for high-quality development of rural water supply in the new stage, and to provide references for continuously improving the rural water supply guarantee system and promoting the sustainable development of rural water supply.

County-level unified management of rural water supply: practical achievements, current challenges and paths for quality improvement

County-level unified management of rural water supply is a key measure for promoting equal access to basic public services in urban and rural areas, advancing the modernization of rural water supply, and addressing persistent challenges in post-construction operation and maintenance. It is also an important component of China's “3+1” standardized construction and management mode for rural water supply. After years of exploration and practice, the coverage of county-level unified management has continued to expand nationwide, accompanied by steady improvements in professionalized operation and maintenance. Nevertheless, constraints remain in some regions, including water tariffs falling below supply costs, insufficient professional operation and maintenance capacity, inadequate substantive coverage of small-scale water supply projects, and incomplete mechanisms for sustainable operation. Based on nationwide survey data and typical practices from different regions, this paper examines the contemporary significance of county-level unified management of rural water supply, summarizes its major models and practical achievements, and identifies the current bottlenecks. It proposes countermeasures and suggestions in areas such as deepening water tariff reform, improving fiscal subsidy mechanisms, establishing a professional service system linking county, township, and village levels, accelerating the upgrading of water supply facilities, and strengthening assessment and regulatory mechanisms. These measures are intended to promote a shift from “nominal and substantive coverage” toward “effective and high-quality management”, firmly safeguard the bottom line of rural drinking water safety, and provide solid support for comprehensive rural revitalization and the realization of agricultural and rural modernization.

Challenges in the construction and maintenance of small-scale rural water supply projects and implementation pathways for standardization enhancement

Small-scale rural water supply projects are an essential component of China's rural water supply engineering system. The standardization of small-scale rural water supply projects is a key element in implementing the “3+1” standardized construction and management model for rural water supply and promoting its high-quality development. Small-scale rural water supply projects in China are characterized by small scale, scattered distribution, and a large number of projects, with each project serving a relatively small rural population, making operation and maintenance difficult. Under climate change, the water source guarantee capacity of small-scale water supply is insufficient, and under new requirements, there is considerable pressure to ensure stable compliance of water quality in small-scale rural water supply. To address the shortcomings of rural water supply and further improve the construction and management level of small-scale water supply, and to meet the requirements of achieving comprehensive rural revitalization and consolidating the water supply foundation for rural areas to basically have modern living conditions, based on the principles of adapting measures to local conditions, implementing categorized policies, taking multiple measures simultaneously, concentrating resources, and intensifying construction, this paper proposed categorized implementation pathways, including continuously optimizing the rural water supply layout, promoting standardized construction with improved quality and efficiency, strengthening law-based management to improve long-term operation and maintenance mechanisms, securing funds through multiple channels to ensure funding for construction and maintenance, and strengthening scientific and technological research to overcome technical bottlenecks.

Exploration and practice of enhancing the digital-intelligent level of large-scale rural water supply in Zhejiang

Promoting the digital-intelligent development of large-scale rural water supply is a key measure to implement the water governance principles for the new era, foster new-quality productive forces in the water sector, and advance the equalization of urban and rural public water supply services. Based on its provincial geographical conditions of “seven-tenths mountains, one-tenth water and two-tenths farmland”, Zhejiang Province applied the experience of the “Thousand Villages Demonstration and Ten Thousand Villages Renovation” project, and fully implemented the “3+1” standardized construction and management mode for rural water supply. The expanding coverage of large-scale water supply and the improving rural water supply security have raised higher requirements for digital-intelligent management. In recent years, driven by digital reform, Zhejiang has coordinated the deployment of a province-wide sensing network, the implementation of innovative business scenarios and the restructuring of operation and maintenance mechanisms. It has iteratively built the provincial digital platform “Zhe Shui Hao He” for urban and rural water supply, cultivated a number of county-level demonstration models for digital-intelligent rural water supply, and explored differentiated digital-intelligent construction paths for large-scale water supply adaptable to plains, mountainous areas and islands. This paper systematically reviews Zhejiang's practical approaches to the digital-intelligent development of large-scale rural water supply, analyzes the weaknesses in construction, operation and maintenance, summarizes replicable and promotable experiences, and proposes ideas for the digital-intelligent development of rural water supply in the new stage, so as to provide references for the nationwide smart upgrading of large-scale water supply.

Baseline survey and analysis of characteristic pollutants along the Wangyu River

The Wangyu River is a key conduit of the Yangtze-to-Taihu water diversion project, and its water quality is directly related to the water supply security of the Taihu Lake basin. In this study, a comprehensive baseline survey was conducted simultaneously along the main stem and tributaries of the Wangyu River and the Gonghu water source, targeting four categories of characteristic pollutants—heavy metals, algal toxins, plasticizers, and emerging contaminants—to investigate their spatial distribution and variation patterns. The results reveal a general decreasing trend in pollutant concentrations from the Wangyu Sluice toward the Gonghu Lake. The sluice, serving as the entry point of the diverted flow, is identified as the primary source of heavy metals and plasticizers, while the tributaries along the Wangyu River corridor emerge as potential risk zones for algae and emerging contaminants. Based on the spatial distribution characteristics of the pollutants, differentiated control measures were proposed for three types of risk zones: the area near the sluice, the tributary regions, and the Gonghu water source area. For the vicinity of the sluice, point-source interception of industrial antimony and plasticizers along with routine online monitoring is recommended. For the tributary areas, enhanced management of nitrogen and phosphorus non-point sources coupled with algal early warning systems and emergency odor-removal treatment processes should be implemented. For the Gonghu water source area, a long-term monitoring mechanism for microcystins and perfluorooctanoic acid(PFOA) should be established. Although constrained by the limited spatiotemporal representativeness of a single sampling campaign and the absence of monitoring of sediment analysis and PFOA homologues, this baseline survey provides fundamental data for coordinated water quantity–quality regulation of the Yangtze-to-Taihu water diversion project. It also points toward future research directions, including long-term monitoring, sediment–water interface flux studies, and systematic assessment of emerging contaminants.

Dynamic identifcation of the end of Meiyu period and post-food season in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River for real-time forecasting and operation

In the context of global climate change, the seasonal flood patterns in the Yangtze River basin have become increasingly complex, rendering traditional static flood season delineation methods insufficient for the refined operation requirements of reservoirs. To improve the utilization efficiency of floodwater resources, this paper proposed a dynamic identification method for the post-flood season in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, oriented to real-time forecasting and operation. The study constructed a comprehensive index system for the end of Meiyu period in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, which includes rainfall indicators and atmospheric circulation indicators. By comprehensively adopting multiple methods such as statistical staging theory, rising and falling water classifcation analysis, and trend division-ranking analysis of hydrological factors, key hydrological discrimination conditions for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River entering the post-food season, such as water level and discharge, were proposed. A long short-term memory network model was used to simulate the operation process of the Three Gorges Reservoir, and the food control risk of the dynamic control of the operation water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir in the post-food season was evaluated. The results indicate that the proposed dynamic discrimination technique introduces no food control risk in measured major food years in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, such as 1954, 1998, and 2020, and can effectively advance the time when the middle reaches of the Yangtze River enter the post-food season in typical dry years, such as 1972, 1978, 2006, and 2022, on the premise of ensuring food control safety. The results of stochastic runoff experiments also demonstrate that when the Three Gorges Reservoir adopts the dynamic control and operation strategy of the operation water level in the post-food season, the food control risks at the Lianhuatang and Shashi stations are approximately 0.7% and 0.3%, respectively, and the overall risks are manageable. The research results can provide a scientifc basis for the post-food season operation of cascade reservoirs such as the Three Gorges Reservoir.

Speech at the Symposium on Ecological Protection and High-quality Development of the Yellow River Basin

Water Rights and Water Markets: Discussing Economic Means for Achieving Optimal Allocation of Water Resources

This article serves as a speech outline prepared for the 2000 annual conference of the China Institute of Water Resources. On March 30, 1999, during the Seventh National Congress of the China Institute of Water Resources, I presented the viewpoint of "transitioning from engineering water resources to resource-based water resources." That speech cannot be considered a purely academic theoretical article; rather, it was a set of requirements for water resources work based on the practical development of water resources. It aimed to initiate a major discussion on "how China's water resources should face the 21st century" and fulfilled my responsibilities as a leader. Similarly, "Water Rights and Water Markets", although discussing issues of water economics, does not make me an expert in this field. Instead, the urgent demand for the reform and development of water resources in China requires us to research and address such topics. I have merely laid the groundwork to draw attention to this issue.

The Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan(2021—2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 of P. R. China

Analysis of Water Supply and Demand in 21st Century China: Ecological Water Conservancy Research

Facing the resource and environmental challenges in 21st-century China, the issue of water is particularly severe. Scarcity and wastage coexist; abundance and ecological imbalance coexist; contamination and poor management coexist. In fact, there are interconnected and transformative relationships among water resources, water disasters, and water environments. Water, as a core element of ecology and the environment, has positive effects when utilized efficiently as a water resource. However, fluctuations in its abundance and scarcity can lead to water-related disasters, while its quality evolution is closely related to water management and environmental protection efforts...

River health connotation

River health, as one of the river assessment tools, rather than a strictly scientific concept performs a well function in setting up relative bench mark and evaluable criterion, Based on it , river ecosystem states , which varies under double actions of nature force and human activity, could be dynamically monitored and evaluated in order to predict its revolution trend through research and prompt its well development through management. The river health assessment should exhibit the balance between development and protection, the benefit coordinating among correlatively interested individuals and groups. Since water pollution becomes the severest threat to river health in our country, so at present stage of our ecologic environmental construction , its control and treatment should be put in the first place.

A preliminary discussion of the engineering ethics and advanced cultural in Dujiang Weir

The Chinese people has thousands years of history for water governance.The practices of water governance,utilization and management of successive dynasties have left us with rich material,institutional and spiritual wealth.In order to explore the multiple values of this world cultural heritage,discussions are made on the contribution of those outstanding water projects represented by Dujiang Weir,so that Chinese wisdom and China's plan can be developed to address issues of imbalance between water supply and demand and other water crisis.Eco-friendly water project construction in the new age should be led by advanced water culture,with learning from good practices of Dujiang Weir from conservation and cultural prospective,so as to build a society with harmony of man and water and water structures in a modernized and eco-friendly ways.

Human activity and the global climate change and its impact on water resources

In understanding the effect of human activity on the global climate change for recent 100 years, IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has played a key role. During 17 years from 1990, IPCC has continuously gained insight into better understanding on the global climate change during the recent 100 years mainly caused by human activity, with its four assessment reports. This achievement has been made with provision of three aspects of evidences: (1) rapid increase in greenhouse gases since preindustrial era (after 1750); (2) temperature rise or warning of surface, tropospospere and oceans; (3) 100-yr climate simulations since 1900 for detection and attribution of the past climate change. These results have shown that recent 100-yr warming is jointly caused by natural climate fluctuation and anthropogenic activity, but most of recent 50-yr climate change is caused by the authropogenic activity. The present paper has first reviewed this issue. Then, the debates and uncenrtainties of global climate change issue have been discussed. The global climate change has had a significant impact on global water resources and management. This issue is further discussed based on changes in temperature, precipitation, sea level rise and evapotranspiration, which may be a necessary scientific basis for adaptation.

Discussions on key issues of water ecological civilization construction

How to understand water ecological civilization construction? On the basis of the interpretation of the spirit of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,this paper analyses and discusses several key issues of water ecological civilization as follows.First,the definition and connotation of water ecological civilization are given and the links between water ecological civilization construction and ecological civilization construction proposed by the state are elaborated.In addition,this paper analyses the crucial issues which should be paid attention to during the process of advancing water ecological civilization,and proposes specific recommendations to help to make the 5 goals of water ecological civilization come to be realized.

Speech at the Symposium on Ecological Protection and High-quality Development of the Yellow River Basin

The Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan(2021—2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 of P. R. China