Water rights trade is an important policy instrument to resolve water scarcity issues and is one of the important directions of current water management reform in China. Based on a unique consecutive water rights trading dataset of China water exchange during 2016-2022, this paper statistically analyzes the development of water rights trade, the characteristics of different water trading types, and the extension effect of water rights trading experiment in China. The results show that: currently, Chinese water rights trade is mainly on water-drawing right trade and secondly on regional water rights trade, while the water rights trade of irrigation water users are increasingly active; the main performance of regional water rights trade is the reallocation of aggregate water requirement indicators, and the main performance of water-drawing right trade is a trade inter industry while the main performance of water rights trade of irrigation water users is a trade intra industry; the government plays an important role in the water rights trade, but along the development of water rights trade; the participants are beginning diversified and more water users are beginning to access to water market; the extension effect of water rights trading experiments not only showed growing trading amount but also showed innovation of the transaction modes. The further development of Chinese water rights trade lies in constantly innovating the transaction modes, encouraging more water users to participant water trade, promoting water rights reform and adjusting measures to local conditions, and speeding up promotion of the initial water rights allocation and confirmation. Simultaneously, metering and detection system needs to be improved and the construction of legal institutions of water rights trade needs to be promoted to push the development of water rights trade in China.