Water covers 70.8% of the earth surface, but fresh water resource is quite finite, and that could be actually used by people is just a fraction of rivers, lakes and groundwater, accounting for 0.26% of total earth water quantity with unbalanced distribution.
After 1950s, world population grows sharply, industry develops rapidly. Status of world water resource worsens quickly, “water crisis” is more and more serious. On the one hand, the demand of people for water resource expands at surprising speed; on the other hand, gradual serious water pollution nibbles large volume of water resource used for consumption.

About 200 tons of garbage are poured into rivers, lakes and creeks per day around the whole world, one liter water pollutes 8 liters fresh water; all rivers flowing through Asian cities are polluted; 40% of American water resource basin is polluted by processed food scrap, metal, fertilizer and insecticide; water quality of 5 rivers in 55 European rivers is just passable. In 20th century, world population increased doubly, and water used by people increased 5 times. Many countries in the world are facing water crises: 1.2 billion people lack water, 3 billion people lack hygienic facilities of water.
China occupancy volume of water resource per capita is low and spatial distribution is unbalanced. With the accelerated urbanization and industrialization of China, demand gap of water resource is increasing day by day. Under this kind of background, wastewater treatment industry becomes the new emerging industry, at present, it is in the same important position as tap water production, supply and reclaimed water reuse industries.
By the end of 2005, of the 661 cities in the country, there were 383 cities which established 792 wastewater treatment plants, wastewater treatment rate increased from 34% in 2000 to 52%, and formed wastewater treatment technology route and management mechanism adjusting to the situation of the country. Of which, wastewater treatment rate in 135 cities got to or was close to 70%, treatment scale per plant was to 1 million cubic meters per day.
Because of the increasing attention of state and governments at all levels on the environmental protection, China wastewater treatment industry is growing rapidly, total volume of wastewater treatment increases year by year, town wastewater treatment rate increases continuously, but at present, China wastewater treatment industry is still in the primary development stage.

On the one hand, capacity of China wastewater treatment can’t catch up with the rapid expansion of the water using scale, and construction of the matching equipments such as pipe network, sludge treatment, etc. lags behind seriously. On the other hand, There is an obvious gap between China wastewater treatment rate and the one in developed countries, and the load rate of treatment facilities is low.
So, China should perfect the policies and regulations of wastewater treatment, establish supervision system, create rational wastewater treatment charge system, support the development of domestic environmental protection industry, and promote industrialization and marketization of wastewater treatment industry.