Economic Transformation, Technological Innovation, and Policy and Institutional Reforms Hold Keys to Relieving China’s Water Shortages

Although China ranks sixth in total water resources (2.8 trillion m 3 ) in the world, with a population of 1.3 billion the country's annual per capita renewable freshwater availability (less than 2200 m 3 ) is only a quarter of the world's average.The spatial distribution of water resources shows a significant mismatch with that of water demand, while large intra-and interannual variability makes effective utilization of water resources difficult, particularly in the more arid north China (1).The increasing water demand brought by fast industrial and