Abstract: For understanding the water rights trading status in Yangtze River basin and exploring future water rights trading space and direction, we fully investigated the practice of water rights trading in 19 provinces (cities and districts) in the Yangtze River Basin. With demand and problem as the guide, the promotion strategies of water rights trading mechanism construction in the Yangtze River Basin, such as establishing reverse force and incentive mechanism, expanding the scope of tradable water rights, perfecting the construction of water rights trading system, and building regional trading platform were put forward. The research results can be a path reference for the realization of the value of ecological products in water rich areas of South China of water abundant area.