When Will Fresh Water Use in China Reach the Climax?

China is a country of serious water shortage.Future water demand forecast is very important for policies-and-decision-makers to design water supply and demand balance measures and to direct indurtrial location.How about the future trends of water use in China? All the previous studies showed that the water use will continuc to increase until year 2030 or even later to 2080 and the highest water demand reach 700～900 billion cubic meters which is 150～350 billion cubic meters more than recent water use.If so,China will face more serious water short age problem.This paper put for ward a completely different opinion on the future water use trends of China.The water use(meaning fresh water with drawhere) will reach the maxiouum in 10 years because of the following 5 reasons.The first,the water use increase rate in China does already slow down(about 1% a year).The second,China will lift water supply price which is much lower than cost at present and the violently rising water supply price will obstruct the increase of water use.The third,the industrial structural upgrade especially the stagnation and sliding down of heavy industries such as iron and steel industry will cut down industrial water demand.The fourth,Stricter environmental protection regulations and stricter execution of those regulations will oppress the fresh water demand.The fifth,in South China we don't have more arable land to be irrigated while in North China we don't have more fresh water resource to be wihdrawn.