Abstract: Abstract：The sustainability development of the Yangtze River will affect people's life and the development of the cities along the Yangtze River.This study attempts to investigate the relationship between shipping development and water environment of the Yangtze River.Canonical correlation analysis is a multivariate statistical method to study the correlation between two groups of variables.This method is used to analyze the relevant data regarding shipping and water environment of Yangtze River from 2006 to 2016.The Yangtze River shipping prosperity index and the Yangtze River mainline freight volume are used to characterize the development of Yangtze River shipping.The water environment of the Yangtze River was characterized by wastewater discharge, ammonia nitrogen concentration, biochemical oxygen demand, potassium permanganate index and petroleum.The results show that the first canonical correlation coefficient (0.979) from canonical correlation analysis is larger than that from simple correlation analysis, and there is a significant correlation between shipping and water environment of the Yangtze River.As the result of the canonical correlation model, the freight volume of the Yangtze River has a significant impact on the wastewater discharge quantity and petroleum of the Yangtze River water environment.From the classical structure analysis and redundancy analysis results, we can find that the Yangtze River shipping has a strong ability to explain the water environment of the Yangtze River.