Clean drinking water is something westerners take for granted. But not so in China where Californian company Pionetics hopes to tap growing concerns about the quality of China's drinking water. It has just made its novel water treatment system commercially available through a Chinese JV partner.

Now, products to filter drinking water are pretty run-of-the-mill. What is different about Pionetics' system is that it doesn't use a filter or harmful chemicals. Instead, it employs a patented ion exchange process similar to the reverse osmosis system used in industrial desalination plants.

Pionetics claims its product is more efficient than traditional RO systems, so it takes up only half the space and wastes one tenth of the water.

This announcement would normally have gone unnoticed by us if it wasn't for the impressive list of venture capital firms backing Pionetics and the fact that its founder and CEO, Gordon Mitchard, was marketing director at JDS Uniphase, the US optical networking company and fallen dotcom star.

Now, I don't know too many water-filter companies that can raise $11m in three rounds of venture funding. I know even less whose CEO has a working knowledge of dense wavelength multiplexing. So ,one has to assume that the Pionetics is pitching in a different league to the competition -- but how well will its pitch work in China?

Pionetics argues its system is ideal for the Chinese market because clean water is a "rare and expensive commodity". More to the point, Pionetics claims its technology is cheaper than RO systems and can better handle low water pressure -- a problem in China, apparently.

China recently introduced tougher regulations for drinking water, but its expanding urban population puts huge strains on water supplies. A surprisingly frank Xinhua report last year revealed that a sample of tap water from a residential area of Chongqing contained 80 of the 101 pollutants that are now forbidden in drinking water.

Chongqing plans to spend 4.45bn yuan before 2010 to clean up its water, while nationwide it is estimated a phenomenal 50bn yuan will need to be spent. Clearly, Pionetics is hoping that many of China's consumers will prefer not to wait for local governments to get their act together and will buy its system instead.

Pionetics' local partner, Beijing-based Elantec, claims to be the leading manufacturer and distributor of residential water treatment systems in China, with over 8,000 dealers throughout the country. It hopes to sell 140,000 devices in the first two years.

China's rural population also suffer from bad water and their problems are, if anything, worse. According to the excellent China Watch, 300m rural residents, nearly a quarter of China's total population, lack access to clean drinking water. And unlike China's city dwellers, few can afford to splash out on a Pionetics system.