Abstract: Protection and development of the Yangtze River has been the focus of multi-disciplinary research in geography, hydrology, ecology, regional economics and environmental science. Based on the socio-economic statistics, hydrology and water environment monitoring data in the past 30 years and related studies, this paper analyzed the basic situation and main challenges faced in the protection and development of the Yangtze River in the recent 30 years, and proposed the policy suggestion to promote the coordination between the protection and development of the Yangtze River. The results showed that: （1) The economic outputs and urbanization level of the Yangtze River Basin have been continuous growing, its status in China has been significantly improved, the regional development gap has been basically stable, and the resident income has increased rapidly in the recent 30 years; (2) The ecological protection system has been basically established, and pollutant emissions control and regional coordinated development have both achieved some progress, while the level of energy saving and consumption reduction and integrated development need to be improved urgently; （3) The protection and development of the Yangtze River are mainly facing four challenges, including increasingly prominent trade-offs between protection and development, lack of overall planning of industrial development and spatial layout, prominent problems with water environment, water ecology and water disasters and lack of effective coordination management; （4) A comprehensive management mechanism of the protection and development of the Yangtze River was suggested to be established from four aspects, including a stakeholders jointly negotiate decision-making mechanism of river basin integrated management, a unified environmental protection supervision and law enforcement and risk emergency management system, a multi-level control mechanism of ecological protection and space development, and one market-oriented two-way compensation as the core of the ecological compensation system.