Global water transfers embodied in Mainland China's foreign trade: Production- and consumption-based perspectives

Water resources are embodied in global trade. Although China is the largest water withdrawal economy in the world, 50% of its direct water withdrawal is embodied in Chinese imports and exports. Due to an increasing division of activities between different production units, economies such as Mainland China mainly import intermediate products for further processing and then export final goods to other economies. Overall, Mainland China is a net embodied water supplier not only in final consumption-based trade relations but also in intermediate production-based ones. China's total per capita water use is much lower than the global average, but yet China exports embodied water through trade activities. Pakistan, Myanmar and India are China's largest embodied water suppliers, and Hong Kong, the United States and Japan are its largest net recipients. The main water exporting sectors in Mainland China are Electrical and Machinery (Sector 9) and Textiles and Wearing Apparel (Sector 5) respectively, and the main importing sector is Agriculture (Sector 1) with imports coming mainly from Myanmar, Pakistan, the United States and North Korea. This analysis of China's global embodied water transfers can inform policies to increase China's water use efficiency and can be generated to build embodied water budgets for a systematic allocation of water resources on the globe especially from the production- and consumption-based perspectives.