Abstract: There has no country that can survive without access to water resources. River basins, as the key bodies of water resources, are the source of human civilizations. It is particularly true for China, which is one of the four ancient civilizations and the most populated country in the world today. The Yangtze Basin (YB) started to take over the Yellow River Basin as the center of China's agroeconomic activities after the Tang Density (640 A.D.) due to the climate change. Despite of unfavourable development policies in a certain period, YB has again played a key role in the national economic growth when the new republic sets its task to pursuit industrialization since the early 1950s because of its good location and high quality of human resources. It is expected that Yangtze Basin would have to be functioned more than expected, especially in the development of heavychemical industry. Undoubtedly, geographical condition will continually play as a key factor when the climate change is unfavourable to the north arid land. As the most crowded area in China, however, YB has already faced great challenges itself, such as soil erosion in its upper stream, air pollution in its urban areas, energy shortage for the whole region, the conflict of land use between rural area and the cities, etc. All these problems could be handled by sustainable regional development policies.

Key words: the Yangtze Basin, regional development, national industrialization