Abstract: The differences in water resource applications between major countries of Africa and China were shown by analyzing big data in the past five centuries, with focus on macroscopic discussion on issues of China's water resources environmental protection. China's urbanization leaped forward since the reform and opening up four decades ago, and correspondingly China has been attaching ever-increasing importance on ecological environment. In recent years, China has intensified its efforts in ecological protection by taking measures and researching methods of water pollution control, such as external pollution interception, internal pollution controlling, water purification, ecological restoration and flowing water circulation. Such efforts are constructive, though they are prone to degenerate into universal dogmatism, or even cause severe problems especially when little regard is given to regional and target features. The case of Chongqing implementing its “clear water and green banks” project and “two rivers and four banks” project is discussed in this paper. Water environment ecological protection should target at water resources quality and its objectives rather than merely meeting standards of water quality of a given class at monitoring points. In water environment protection and ecological restoration, hierarchical management by different classes of water resources quality objectives needs to be set for different levels of watersheds.

Key words: water environment, ecological protection, water resource utilization, water resources quality, major African countries, China