China is a country with vast territory and a large amount of resources, excelling on many respects in the world. However, because of its large population, the per capita accounts of most resources remain beneath the world's average level. So the shortage of natural resources is quite clear.

Because of imbalance of water and land arrangement, China sees an unbalanced population distribution. Based on the isohyet of 400 millimeters, the division line generally goes from Aihui, Heilongjiang Province, across the Greater Hinggan Mountains, Zhangjiakou, Yulin, Lanzhou, Changdu to Tengchong, Yunan Province, thus dividing the whole country into two sections with generally equivalent acreage from northeast to southwest. In the whole country, 90 percent of arable land, forest and population are concentrated in the southeast. The northwest sees more undeveloped land and desert, with less than ten percent of arable land and population; but it is rich in mine resources. In addition, as the south of China is rich in water but short of coal while the north of China is short of water but rich in coal, various projects are been implemented, such as South-to-North water diversion project, North-to-South coal transportation project and West-to-East electricity transmission project.

Generally speaking, China's resources are still in a low degree of utilization but have a large development potential. For example, 2/3 of China's plowlands are medium and low yielding croplands with less than half of water-irrigated ones; less than 10% of the nearly 30 million mu of sand beach along the sea was used; the altogether 70 million mu of the nationwide freshwater surface area left almost a half unused; the national forest resources was insufficient but large quantities of woods in remote and out-of-the-way regions were overmature and moldered; and China's water resources has great potentials with less than 5% of exploitation and utilization rate.