Abstract: As an emerging subject, watershed management is a system coordinating management, reservation and utilization of watershed resources at basin scale, and it is also a subdiscipline of management science for achieving scientific and sustainable development, and ecological civilization construction. In this paper, the formation and development of watershed management were comprehensively interpreted and the management objectives, features and shortcomings of three types of management models including unified water resource management, water quality target control management and integrated unified management were summarized. The multi-level and unified pollution control system covering watershed-region-pollution control unit-pollution source should be established for modern watershed management. Through the discussions about the development of watershed management in China in combination with the practice in Liaohe River Basin, the contents related to development trend of intelligent management tools, ecological management, and integrated management mechanisms for watershed management was expounded.