根据作者最近对中华人民共和国的三次访问，讨论了向世界四分之一人口提供公共供水的挑战。在生活在农村的8亿人中，只有约3亿人有安全饮用水。管道系统提供了其中的15%。另外5亿农村人口有饮用水问题，包括4500万人饮用含过量氟化物的水，6000万人依赖微咸水，1.5亿人饮用未经充分处理的受污染地表水，5000万人没有足够的水源。由于近300个城市、2000多个县和5万个农村社区的行政单位的多样性，中国农村的供水服务非常复杂。作为一个发展中国家，中国已经将供水权力下放，由当地村庄发起，由较大的行政单位提供技术援助。 讨论的其他项目包括处理流程、分配、计量和规划。包括1个参考，数字。

The challenge of providing one fourth of the world's population with public water supplies is discussed based on the author's three recent missions to the People's Republic of China. Of the 800 million persons living in villages, only about 300 million have safe water available. Piped systems supply 15 percent of these. The other 500 million of the rural population have problems with drinking water, including 45 million persons who are supplied with waters containing excess fluorides, 60 million who depend on brackish waters, 150 million who draw on polluted surface waters that are not adequately treated, and 50 million who do not have adequate sources of water. Providing water service in rural China is complicated because of the diversity of administrative units in the nearly 300 cities, over 2000 counties, and 50,000 rural communities. China as a developing country has decentralized water supply, with the initiative coming from the local village and technical assistance coming from larger administrative units. Other items discussed are treatment processes, distribution, metering, and planning. Includes 1 reference, figures.