New quality productive forces in water conservancy, as an important part of new quality productive forces, are important engines to promote the high-quality development of water conservancy, which can enhance the efficiency of water resources utilization and guarantee national water security. Based on panel data from 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) from 2012 to 2022, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for new quality productive forces in water conservancy. Additionally, it constructs a spatial correlation network using modified gravitational model, social network analysis, and quadratic assignment procedure, and explores its driving factors. The results show that the overall new quality productive forces in water conservancy in China show a significant upward trend, with the spatial pattern of“the strongest in the eastern region, the second in the center region, and relatively weaker in the western and northeastern regions”and“the stronger in the southern region and the weaker in the northern region”. The correlation of the spatial correlation network has gone through the dynamic evolution process of“enhancement-stabilization-weakening-recovery”. No provincial-level region is in isolation, and the difference distribution of nodes reflects the spatial preference of the flow of water resources. The economic development, scientific and technological development, human capital, environmental regulation and financial support have different effects on the spatial network of new quality productive forces in water conservancy. Therefore, it is necessary to further strengthen regional coordination and cooperation, optimize scientific and technological investment and innovation, improve policy support and develop the new quality productive forces in water conservancy according to local conditions.

The entropy weight method was used to construct an economic resilience evaluation index system to evaluate the economic resilience levels of 40 cities in the Yangtze River Basin from 2007 to 2021. The method of subgroup decomposition of Dagum’s Gini coefficient and other methods were utilized to evaluate the evolution of the spatial and temporal differences in the economic resilience of the Yangtze River Basin as a whole and its upper, middle, and lower regions. The results show that from 2007 to 2021, the overall level of economic resilience increased significantly, with the proportion of high resilience cities rising from 0.025 to 0.275 and the proportion of low resilience cities falling from 0.25 to 0.025. The levels of economic resilience of various regions of the Yangtze River Basin exhibit spatial heterogeneity: the lower reaches show the highest resilience, followed by the upper reaches, with the middle reaches being the lowest. The dominant factors causing differences in economic resilience vary over time, mainly due to intra-regional differences from 2007 to 2008 and with hypervariable density contributing the most after 2009. Accordingly, it is proposed that regional stakeholders in the Yangtze River Basin should strengthen synergistic cooperation to enhance the overall economic resilience, and that different cities in each region should adopt targeted measures according to their own characteristics.