In a subscriber-only article about Water shortages in China

Last year China consumed four times as much water for each 10,000 yuan ($1,200) of GDP compared with the world average, the Ministry of Water Resources said this month.

But keeping the capital well supplied is a top political priority. Beijing relies heavily on water from Hebei, which has little choice but to provide generous quantities in spite of its own acute needs.

What about pricing it? John Peet wrote earlier, the wasteful misuse of water

stems largely from a wilful refusal to treat water as an economic good, subject to the laws of supply and demand. Water, the stuff of life, ought to be the most precious of all gifts. Yet throughout history, and especially over the past century, it has been ill-governed and, above all, colossally underpriced. Indeed it is often given away completely free. Not only does this ignore the huge costs of collecting, cleaning, storing and distributing it, to say nothing of treating waste-water and sewage. It also leads to overuse of water for the wrong things, especially for highly water-intensive crops. This survey will argue that the best way to deal with water is to price it more sensibly—to reflect, so far as possible, the costs of providing it (including environmental costs), as well as its marginal utility.

After all, China Boosts Power Prices to Slow Usage.