Surface water is an irreplaceable strategic resource for human survival and social development. It is of great significance to fully grasp the quantity, spatial distribution and dynamic changes of surface water in China accurately, quickly and timely. With the rapid development of Chinese remote sensing satellite industry, monitoring surface water in whole China quarterly has become a task of challenge but achievable. This paper analyzes and compares the advantages and disadvantages of existing algorithms for surface water extraction. And a practical and useful algorithm workflow is proposed. Based on 2-meter resolution multi-spectral satellite images, the paper adopts the regional fast-growing water extraction algorithm combined with water element buffers. 1,265 above level 3 rivers, their associated 2,128 reservoirs and 2,953 above-1-km2 natural lakes in China have been fast extracted quarterly with high-precision. Practice has shown that the automatic extraction algorithm is one of the most effective algorithms for realizing the automatic monitoring of large-scale surface water.