Abstract: This paper discusses and analyzes the essence of water resources carrying capacity(WRCC) of the radical carrying capacity questions.The WRCC,unlike other carrying capacity being the objective and internal value,is affected by the regional development goals,and alters under the different development goals.Accordingly,the study on WRCC must be carried out under concrete regional development goals.Therefore,this paper employs goal programming as the quantitative method of WRCC and takes Beijing as a study case,and calculates and analyzes the WRCC and goals realization under the expected development goals.The results show that the expected economic,social and environmental development goals in 2005 can not be achieved totally because of the condition restriction of water resources.The expected development goals in 2010 can be achieved basically due to the improvement of local water resources exploitation and utilization and water supply from the middle route water transfer project of the south-to-north water transfer projects,and the social and economic sizes can be consolilated by means of water resources 11 833 thousand people and 473.27 billion RMB GDP.To solve the inconsistency between water resources carrying capacity and development goals,the population,on the one hand,should be controlled; the water consumption effectiveness should be improved; and the industrial structure should be optimized.On the other hand,the expected development goals should be adjusted according to actual situation.