Water resources management in China based on coordinated development index

To develop an applicable indicators system and a reasonable model to evaluate water resources management in China, this paper explored adaptation relationship and weights between the bottom indicators and subsystems based on global principal component analysis method. Additionally, this paper obtained coordination degree and coordinated development index though simulation and applied K-means to reveal the law of coordinated development. The empirical results showed that (i) water efficiency, water supply, water demand, and water structure were four subsystems in evaluation indicators system, and the scores of water supply subsystem were the lowest among them; (ii) research samples were divided into five clusters according to the coordinated development index, and the overall water resources in the east and south were abundant, while in the west and north were poor; and (iii) water efficiency was relatively high in regions with shortage of water resources or more developed economies. Thus, it can be concluded that the distribution of water resources was uneven, and water efficiency was the key subsystem to improve coordinated development of water resource management.