Abstract:Taking the practice of water right trading in Zibo, an old water-deficient industrial city in North China, as an example, this paper analyzes how Zibo adopts a solution-oriented thinking to resolve the contradiction between water supply and demand and revitalize and empower state-owned water assets. It sorts out the achievements of Zibo in establishing trading systems, building operation platforms and innovating trading modes, and reveals the practical logic of transforming water resources from static quotas into tradable and value-added assets. In view of existing constraints such as insufficient refined rules and imperfect pricing mechanisms, it proposes to take advantage of Zibo's status as the only municipal pilot of water right reform within provincial pipeline networks in Shandong, improve a full-cycle institutional system and multi-level trading platforms, and further smooth the channels for realizing the value of water assets. This study expects to provide a "Zibo Model" for similar regions to optimize water resource allocation and materialize the value of state-owned water assets.