YANGTZE RIVER (Longest River in Asia)

The Yangtze River (Chang Jiang in China), is the longest river in Asia and the 3rd longest on the earth. It is 3,988 miles (6,418 kilometers) long and flows from the glaciers on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau in Qinghai. Before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai the river flows eastward across southwest, central and eastern China. It is also considered as one of the biggest rivers by discharge volume in the world. The Yangtze drains one-fifth of the land area of China, and its river basin is home to one-third of the China's population.

The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as twenty percent of the People's Republic of China's Gross Domestic Product. The Yangtze River flows through a wide array of ecosystems and is the itself habitat to several endemic and endangered species including the Chinese alligator and the Yangtze sturgeon. For many years, people of China have used the river for transportation, water, irrigation, industry sanitation, boundary-marking and war. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the biggest hydro-electric power station in the world.