A Study On China’s Water Resources Allocation Conflicts Between Urban And Rural Areas

With the continuous progress of industrialization and urbanization, water shortages become an important factor restricting China’s economic and social development. In china, based on the public properties of water resources and historical factors, government is the "only" legitimate allocation authority of water resources, with the character of extremely low level market allocation of water resources. In recent years, the situation of deteriorating water situation in the whole society, especially under the in arid natural disaster situations, urban and rural two regional bodies faces different water use patterns:intense competition for water in urban and rural areas, rural water shortage situation is even more serious than in the cities, and the conflicts of urban and rural water resources allocation are moving towards normalization and universalization. In this case, scholars began to explore urban and rural water resources allocation conflicts,and reveal the logic essence of the phenomenon theoretically.The thesis mainly use institutional analysis. Chapter one will have a full description of water allocation conflict in china’s rural and urban areas. Combined with the history and reality situational factors, chapter two mainly build the country’s water resources allocation institutional systems from the three aspects, included:organization structure,institutional content, and the institutional environment.Institutional systems have dramatic features with rapid change of the external environment, the urban-rural dual, local government agencies, allocation rules fuzzy. It is not only the logical starting point of the water resources allocation behavior of the local government, but also the endogenous variable between urban and rural water allocation conflict. The paper pointed out that the reasons resulted in water resources allocation conflict between urban and rural are:"reality-driven" by urbanization and industrialization, promoted pressure under the competition in the local governments, the urban-rural dual structure of "path dependence", and local government’s "strategic behavior". The system of distribution of water resources in China is limited to the urban and rural relationship status, the the rural burden on the system costs, inequitable distribution of water resources in society continue to highlight the negative effects. Finally, from point of view of the water rights, income compensation, water conservancy associations, integrated management,the paper puts forward some policy recommendations to resolve the distribution of water resources in urban and rural areas.But a scientific, systematic and operation of the institutional arrangements still need further exploration.