At present, China is in the key period of environmental pollution control and ecological civilization. It is facing great pressure in wastewater treatment and there are urgent innovation demands in water environment protection e.g. refractory industrial wastewater treatment, resource recovery from sewage and micro-pollutant removal. Chinese government of Science and Technology Department has set up a huge R & D project (the National Water Pollution Control and Treatment Science and Technology Major Project), trying to promote rapid breakthrough in these areas and cultivate competitive enterprises. There are extensive cooperation opportunities with advanced European research institutions and enterprises.
At the same time, China’s water industry is also promoting the integrated innovation with new strategy to transform its market. One innovative example was China’s Concept WWTPs, which was set up by an Expert Committee with six local experts and aims to build several concept WWTPs over the next five years. The concept WWTPs aim to achieve goals of sustainable water quality, energy self-sufficiency, resources recovery and be environmentally friendly with fundamentally different approaches to managing water pollution.