Stretching for some 6,300 km from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the west to the East China Sea in the east, the Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world. Running through Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, Chongqing, Shanghai, and many other well-known megacities, the Yangtze River and its tributaries have nurtured the growth of some of the country’s most industrially advanced regions. 

Despite its crucial role in shaping the country’s modern socioeconomic landscape, the Yangtze River basin was once a wide stretch of wasteland and only started to be inhabited in the eighth century, when the country’s population embarked upon a largescale southward migration from the Yellow River basin in north China. 

As more and more people settled in the Yangtze River basin, agriculture began to flourish. With a mild climate and rich soils, the area furnished its new settlers with a quite ideal place for crop cultivation. Carrying a tremendous volume of water, which is 20 times the flow of the Yellow River, the Yangtze has created new farmlands by transporting massive amounts of sediment and depositing them in its lower reaches. 

However, the river has also long plagued its surrounding areas with floods and soil erosion, and the unpredictable nature of the river has led many people to turn from agriculture toward trade. As the backbone of China’s inland water transport system, the Yangtze has also supported the rise of its riverside trade-intensive cities and towns with a fluid movement of people and goods. The centuries-long concentration of commercial activities in the area has laid the foundation for the country’s modern industrialization.

(Lifeweek, June 19)