The Yangtze River, or Changjiang, meaning "Long River", is Asia's longest river and the third longest in the world (after the Nile and the Amazon). It and the Yellow River are China's most important waterways. It is well over 6,000 km in length, flowing from the mountains of Tibet to the East China Sea. It is a major transportation artery for China and its alluvial plains support much of China's agriculture.

It flows through the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangsu and the cities of Nanjing and Shanghai. Shanghai is China's largest port, actually on the Huangpu tributary of the Yangtze, just south of the Yangtze's mouth. The Yangtze is considered the boundary between northern and southern China. Cruises along the river are a major tourist industry; the upper Yangtze is home to spectacular landscapes, descending almost 5,000 meters from the Tibetan Plateau, including the marvelous Three Gorges.

The Yangtze has been in the news lately regarding the Three Gorges Dam, a hydroelectric project currently under construction (planned completion: 2009) that will provide an enormous amount of power, becoming the largest power generating site in the world, displacing upwards of one million citizens. Many ecological groups have protested as well, fearing the environmental consequences of the project. Others worry about the historical ramifications: many extremely important archaeological sites may be submerged by the project. In the Three Gorges area, more than a thousand archaeological sites stand to be lost forever, documenting the little-studied but perhaps extremely important early cultures of the region, which may well rival the Yellow River culture in their significance. Unfortunately, not a single historian or archaeologist was involved in the planning of the project, and significant money for cultural preservation wasn't allocated until the monetary value of ancient Chinese artifacts was revealed in 1996 by the sale for $4 million of a 2,000 year old Han dynasty-era bronze figurine. Much potential knowledge of the Yangtze River culture will be lost when the region is flooded.