Yangtze River

Cultural  

1. River in China, flowing from the highlands of Tibet in western China generally eastward through central China and emptying into the Pacific Ocean at Shanghai.

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At about four thousand miles, it is the longest river of China and of Asia.

Also called the Chang.

A major east-west trade and transportation route in China.

Example Sentences

A refugee from the Sino-Japanese War who fled mainland China to Hong Kong, he started a business in 1950 manufacturing plastic flowers and named it Cheung Kong after China's Yangtze River.

From Barron's • Jan. 30, 2026

ZPMC’s crane-building empire is based on Changxing Island in an estuary of the Yangtze River.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 28, 2025

Andrew Law, a sociologist at Newcastle University in the U.K., has used lidar mapping to digitally preserve structures along China’s Yangtze River that were threatened or wiped out by extensive damming.

From Slate • Jul. 25, 2025

A further 9,000 people were evacuated from the Chongming District, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, city authorities said.

From BBC • Sep. 16, 2024

Some or all of these centers may actually comprise several nearby centers where food production arose more or less independently, such as North China’s Yellow River valley and South China’s Yangtze River valley.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond