Abstract: Water resources carrying capacity (WRCC) is the basis for the development of townships in inland river basin. To meet the needs of sustainable utilization of water resources in township construction and based on the understanding of WRCC conception, this study established a series of evaluation system for WRCC in township level. Comprehensive WRCC evaluation was carried out in the middle reaches of Heihe River. Key advancement strategies were analyzed by using multi-source data such as statistic, remote sensing or survey data by combing regulation metrics and comprehensive index. The results show that: (1) There were significant differences in water stress index and comprehensive index between different types of irrigated areas and between different types of townships, indicating that it is necessary to implement advancement strategies to improve the WRCC in key areas; (2) At the current annual development level, water right allocation, high-standard farmland, and industrial structure adjustment can improve the WRCC in townships to some extent. Except for the output value mode, all modes can basically improve the comprehensive carrying capacity by 0.01%-1.87%. Importantly, the high-standard farmland and industrial structure adjustment can effectively increase the comprehensive carrying capacity by 1.91%-8.72% and 0.11%-3.06%, respectively.