The Yangtze River

The Yangtze River is the greatest river in Asia and third longest in the world. The headwaters of the Yangtze are positioned at an elevation of about 16,000 feet in the Kunlun Mountains in the southwestern part of Qinghai. It flows usually south through Sichuan into Yuanan then northeast and east crossways middle China through Sichuan, Hubei, Auhui, and Juangsu provinces to its mouth, 3,720 miles, in the East China Sea north of Shanghai. The river has over 700 tributaries but the main tributaries are the Hun, Yalong, Jialing, Min, Tuo Jiang, and Wu Jiang. The weather ranges from 96 degrees in the summer to cold, brisk temperatures in the winter. Precipitation is high due to the height of the mountains. 

China covers an area of almost 3.7 million square miles and is the most crowded country on earth having more than one billion people. The bordering countries contain Mongolia, Kazakhstan, India, Nepal, Burma, Vietnam and Korea. The People's Republic is led by Chinese Communist Party and governed by the State Council. The main language spoken is the Mandarin vernacular of Chinese but there are more than 150 languages and dialects spoken throughout the country. Approximately 350 million people occupy the area of the Yangtze. There is plenty of wildlife along the river as well which include the Tibetan antelopes, Mongolian gazelles, and snow leopards, just to name a few. 

Waters of the Yangtze are frequently used for rice and wheat irrigation. It also has huge and infinite hydroelectric resources. In 1995 edifice began on the Three Gorges Dam near Yichang and is scheduled for completion in 2009. The dam will measure about 600 feet and about 1.5 miles wide. The dam is predictable to help control the flooding of the Yangtze River Valley. The Three Gorges will also be the largest electricity generating ability in the world. The hydroelectric generators will provide 1/9 of China's total power output.

There is a lot of argument surrounding the construction of the dams. There are 140 villages, 1,600 factories and over 80,000 acres of growable land that will be shattered. It may also cause animals to become dead. The area is very flat to earthquakes because it lies directly on a fault line. Actually, the plateau and gorges were created by collision of the Indian-Australian plate, drifting northward, with the Eurasian plate that began over 40 million years ago and continues today. It is nominated as one of the natural wonders.