China will put the strictest management of water resources the government ever had into practice to pave the way for ensuring a sustainable development of economy and its goal of heading for a well-off society in the years ahead.

A farmer walks on a dried-up riverbed on the outskirts of Zhengzhou, Henan province February 12, 2009. [Agencies]

"From now on, the water authorities would mark three red lines for managing the resources to intensify administration and supervision over the resources' reasonable exploitation, efficient utilization, overall distribution and protection," a top water official said.

Addressing a national conference on the water issue on Saturday in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Chen Lei, minister of the water resources, made it clear that water authorities throughout the country would draw red lines for controlling the total amount of water use in various sectors, the discharge of pollution into rivers, and the waste of water.

"Only in this way can we finally form a system of scientifically managing China's water resources, a critical natural and strategical factor for economic and social sustainability," he said.

To make it work, he called on water authorities to work together to set up a security guarantee system for the resources management by strictly enforcing their water-related laws, keeping an eye on those overusing water only for their present benefits like randomly developing high water-consumed sectors such as steel manufacturing that has been discouraged by the central government.

Under the system, water-use quotas would be set for all users with higher prices had to be paid by those consuming more water than they needed by exceeding supply ration they had or even with the projects they launched to be concealed, insiders said.

Meanwhile, various water-saving irrigation methods will be adopted for farming and other sectors throughout the country as well as for the everyday life of ordinary people to turn the society into a water-saving one as early as possible.

In rural areas, priorities will be given to help more than 200 million of residents and about 100 million township residents who have no access to safety drinking water.

And, instead of mainly supplying water for farming and industries as the country did decades before, more water supply would also be available for improving local environment or rehabilitating the fragile eco-system resulted from the lack of water supply in the years ahead for areas like shrinking wetlands.

With the management intensified further, Chen hoped that, by 2020, water consumption of China's per 10,000 yuan ($1,464) worth of GDP could be reduced to less than 125 cubic meters or 60 per cent lower than the previous level with more than 55 percent of irrigation water hopefully to be used efficiently for growing crops.