About the Yangtze River

The Yangtze River is emerging as one of the world's key economic growth corridors, a major area of development as China implements perhaps its highest priority, the extension of modernization to areas other than coastal cities, which disproportionately benefited from China's economic emergence over the past 30 years. Key to the development of cities along the Yangtze will be the upgrading of container shipping facilities and river transit services, which are expanding rapidly with the emergence of the regional economy. It takes between 7-9 days of transit from Upper Reaches locations west of the now-navigable Three Gorges Dam down to Nanjing, Taicang, Nantong and Shanghai where connections are made with deepwater ships.

Originating deep in remote Western China, the economic focus of the river is on the Eastern half, from Chongqing to its coastal terminus at Shanghai. The river divides China North and South and with the final completion of the Three Gorges dam in late 2009, lengthy stretches of the Upper Reaches are now navigable, creating an east - west corridor. The navigable portion, or the length that can support the movement of goods via barge, is only 2800 km/1,738 miles, or 45% of the total length of the river. This area, commonly referred to as the Yangtze River basin, flows through the two municipalities of Chongqing (at the western end) and Shanghai (at the eastern end), as well as the seven provinces of Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. From Chongqing in the west, the river passes through the Upper, Middle and Lower reaches before reaching the coastal city of Shanghai. The combined population of these two municipalities and seven provinces total 472 million people, making the Yangtze River Basin more than 50% larger than the United States in an area roughly four times the size of California.

All along the Upper, Middle and Lower reaches, infrastructure development in the form of roads, rails, tunnels, bridges and port facilities is under way at a feverish pace. The Hanyang terminal in Wuhan, for example, is now the largest container terminal in the Middle and Upper reaches of the Yangtze River and handles 70% of the container traffic from Wuhan. The annual handling capacity has been expanded in stages from an initial 80,000 TEUs to the current level of 500,000-600,000 TEUs.

The Yangtze River is emerging as a principal engine of growth in the world. The river is a catalyst for China's policy of promoting economic growth in interior regions -- one of China's highest priorities. The corridor known as the Yangtze River Basin, with Chongqing at one end and Shanghai at the other, traverses 1,700 miles across seven provinces, and is becoming a magnet for private and public investment. A rapidly expanding network of roads, bridges, tunnels, railroads and port facilities is coming into existence to support the region's breakneck expansion. For companies seeking ideal conditions for manufacturing and assembly, and for transportation and logistics providers seeing an opportunity to support such activity, the Yangtze River must be on the radar screen.