More than 100 cities have inadequate water supplies, with more than half ``seriously threatened,'' the official Xinhua News Agency cited Qiu Baoxing, a vice minister of construction, as saying.

``The uneven distribution of the limited resource and serious pollution further deteriorate the situation,'' Qiu said.

In Beijing, for example, each resident has access to only 10,593 cubic feet of water a year, compared with the world average of 35,310 cubic feet, Xinhua said in a separate report.

Recent urban greenery projects have only worsened the problem due to widespread planting of lawns and construction of fountains that consume large amounts of water, he said.

Meanwhile, experts warned that more than 300 million rural Chinese lack clean drinking water since most waterways are fouled by industrial effluent, untreated sewage and runoff of agricultural chemicals from fields.

A survey in January found that only 47 percent of water in major rivers is drinkable, while half of all lakes are heavily polluted. And 35 percent of ground water is undrinkable due to pollution, Xinhua reported.

``Hundreds of thousands (of) Chinese are afflicted with various diseases from drinking water that contains too much fluorine, arsenic, sodium sulfate or bitter salt,'' it cited Wang Shucheng, minister of Water Resources, as saying.

Wang said the government planned to boost spending on water treatment. He called for better enforcement of often-ignored environmental protection standards.

A five-year, 18 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) program to improve the drinking water supply in the countryside, home to three-quarters of China's 1.3 billion people, has already ensured safe water for 57 million people, Xinhua reported.