Ensuring energy, water and food security is a core challenge as well as an opportunity to national sustainable development. This paper aims to perform an in-depth analysis on demand-driven energy, water and land resource requirements by Chinese economy 2012 and corresponding energy-water-land nexus relationships in its supply chains by using the input-output analysis and the structural path analysis. Results show that Agriculture and Light industry, mainly related to household consumption, are critical aggregated sectors for water and land requirements, in contrast to Heavy industry and Construction, which are related to investment for energy requirements. 15.41% of the total energy requirement, 44.18% of water and 58.64% of land can be attributed to the top 20 supply chain paths. The energy-water-land nexuses are explored by industrial sector, supply chain path and final demand category from the perspective of embodiment. On the final demand side, Agriculture, Light industry, Construction and Service are critical nexus sectors. Major sectoral nexus paths in terms of energy-land, energy-water, water-land, and energy-water-land nexuses are further identified. The energy-water-land nexus in China's supply chains reflect a strong dependence relationship of energy, water and land resource requirements, which then demonstrate essential intervention points of demand-side resource management. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.