The Yangtze or Yangzi is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. Its drainage basin comprises one-fifth of the land area of China, and is home to nearly one-third of the country’s population.
The name Yangtze—derived from the name of the ancient fiefdom of Yang—has been applied to the river mainly by those in the West. Chang Jiang (“Long River”) is the name used in China, although it also is called Da Jiang (“Great River”) or, simply, Jiang (“[The] River”). The Yangtze is the most important river of China. It is the country’s principal waterway, and its basin is China’s great granary and contains nearly one-third of the national population.
In its upper reaches the Yangtze River drains across the Plateau of Tibet, which is still uplifting as the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide. The bedrock comprises an assemblage of marine sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. Within intermontane basins, thick deposits of sediments of Cenozoic age—i.e., less than about 65 million years old—overlie the bedrock. The Yangtze descends abruptly from the Tibetan Plateau to flow across deeply eroded mountain plateaus consisting of Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks roughly 350 to 150 million years old. In its lower reaches, the Yangtze River flows across basin fills of Cenozoic material that is about 65 to 25 million years old. These are the result of fluvial sedimentation as the Yangtze has migrated across its lower basin throughout its Cenozoic history.
Credit : Britannica
Picture Credit : Google
