Among more than 600 cities across China, nearly half of them suffer from water shortage. Take Beijing for example, the city relies heavily on water diverted through the South-North Water Diversion Project - 70 percent of the water pumped into the city comes from the Yangtze River.

To cope with water shortage in the cities, the Chinese government plans to invest more than 86.5 billion yuan ($13.3 billion) to build "sponge cities" that collect and recycle 70 percent of rainwater. The government also proposed to use a seawater desalination system and build a groundwater monitoring system to build a water-saving country.

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