Based on the literatures on utilization efficiency of water resource collected by CSSCI and EI databases on CNKI from 2000 to 2020, the knowledge graph of researches on utilization efficiency of water resources in China is drawn by using the CiteSpace software, and the distribution of time, authors, institutions, research hotspots and trends are analyzed. The results show that there is not enough cooperation among the main body of the researches on utilization efficiency of water resources. The key words can be grouped into water right trading and water right system, water footprint, water shortage, agricultural water price, carrying capacity of water resources, industrial structure, etc. The research hotspots in the future include water resource management, water footprint, influencing factors, industrial water use, Yangtze River Economic Belt, utilization efficiency of water resources, efficiency of green water resources, green development of the Yangtze River Basin and the Yangtze River Economic Belt.