Abstract: In order to realize the ecological environment and high-quality development strategy of the Yellow River Basin,it becomes necessary to investigate the water resources carrying capacity condition in the basin. In view of the actual situation of each province and region in the Yellow River Basin,an index system consisting of three criterion layers and 13 indicators is constructed from the water resources subsystem,socio-economic subsystem and ecological environment subsystem,and the fuzzy set-pair analysis method and barrier degree model,which is a combination of entropy weighting method and hierarchical analysis method,are used to evaluate the water resources carrying capacity of each province in the Yellow River Basin from 2008 to 2017 and to identify and analyze their obstacle factors. The conclusion analysis shows that the water resources carrying capacity of each province in the Yellow River basin in general has improved significantly during the decade,with Henan,Sichuan and Qinghai provinces being the most obvious,while Ningxia and Inner Mongolia provinces did not improve significantly. The main reasons for this result are the uneven distribution of water resources conditions and the unbalanced development of economic and social levels in the Yellow River Basin provinces,while the five indicators of per capita water resources,average annual precipitation,ecological water use rate,irrigation rate of arable land and per capita GDP are the main obstacle factors that hinder the improvement of the water resources carrying capacity of the Yellow River Basin.