Remember the geographical knowledge points many years ago that the Rhine River in Western Europe is the most navigable river in the world? Later, it was said that the Mississippi River in the United States was the first? Time has passed, and these have long become the "old yellow calendar". Looking around the great rivers of the world today, the Yangtze River is the giant of shipping strength and the existence of solitary defeat!
Last month, there was a piece of news: the 10,000-ton cargo ship "Chuangxin 5" successfully sailed directly from Zhoushan Port in Zhejiang Province to Chongqing, marking the opening of a new route. This move makes us feel even more shocked by the strength of the Yangtze River, the world's first golden waterway!
Judging from the CCTV news photos above, the 10,000-ton ship sailed through the most dangerous section of the Three Gorges River, and the river water has not yet reached the high water level of the mountains on both sides, which proves that this navigation was not achieved by taking advantage of the high water level during the flood season. In early May, the Yangtze River basin has reached the rainy season, but it is not the main flood season; The author consulted the 10-day national isometric map of precipitation at that time, and saw that the precipitation in most places along the Yangtze River was low year-on-year, only the Minjiang River basin in western Sichuan was high, and the drought in the upper reaches was serious. When the water level is not particularly high, the realization of 10,000-ton ships to Chongqing proves that navigation is sustainable.
The waterway from Chongqing to the mouth of the Yangtze River is 2,400 kilometers long (more than 1,400 kilometers in a straight line), such a long section of the river can be reached by 5,000-ton ships all year round, and this time it also opened a 10,000-ton direct river and sea for the first time. What level is this?
What is the status of the Yangtze River's shipping volume in the world?
At present, the inland rivers with relatively developed shipping in the world are: the Yangtze River water system, the Pearl River water system, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the Huai River, etc. In the world, there are the Mississippi River in North America, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River system, the Rhine River and the Danube River in western Europe, and the Volga River in Russia. Through comprehensive access to the data, I was surprised by the huge annual freight volume of the Yangtze River, which is in a state where all other rivers combined cannot be compared!
The Pearl River system, which ranks second, is also far ahead of other rivers in the world.
In third place is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal (mainly the Jiangsu section, which is blocked north of Shandong), with an annual freight volume of more than 800 million tons, making it the busiest inland river in the world. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which is an inland canal, is different from the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and the Kiel Canal, which communicate with the sea, and the inland canal is water transport, not sea transportation. The construction of river infrastructure in European and American countries is relatively advanced, and the navigation rivers are basically not in a natural state. For example, in western Europe, the entire Rhine basin is full of canals; The Volga River in Russia also has a canal navigable by five seas; The Great Lakes of the United States and Canada, the St. Lawrence River, would not have been able to go to the sea if it were not for canals, so these rivers are counted as shipping data, which has been affected by artificial construction, and it is not an exaggeration to drain the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.
▲ Map of the Yangtze River Basin, the headline number "Water Poor Clouds Rise 1973" depiction, thank you to the author.
In recent years, the Suez Canal has climbed in freight traffic, reaching more than 1 billion tons, and has almost caught up with the Pearl River system, making it the largest canal in the world. However, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is a river, and the canals on the sea - the Suez and Panama canals - are actually a strait, so I did not include them in the ranking, and generally do not regard them as rivers.
Through comparison, I sighed more about the great role of the Yangtze River and Pearl River water systems. This is the result of a combination of factors such as length, river basin area, water volume, location, river direction, climate and economic conditions, etc., each data may not be leading, but it has a very great effect on human economic and social development. Just like the Huangpu River, who would have thought that such a small tributary of 113 kilometers long could reach 300 million tons of freight per year, and it could rank among the top five in the world alone!
The Mississippi River is a large river relatively close to the Yangtze River, and there are only two 6,000-kilometer rivers in the world located in the temperate zone. The Mississippi River is not as valuable as the Yangtze River due to factors such as large sediment, small water volume, and estuarine restrictions, but compared to other rivers in the world, it is also a giant existence, and has historically reached a maximum annual freight volume of 970 million tons, and now it is lower mainly due to the hollowing out of the American entity.
Europe also has the problem of the hollowing out of the real economy, and the Le and Danube are too small compared to the world's big rivers after all, and the Volga and Danube still have fatal problems, flowing in the direction of closed seas, a Caspian Sea, a Black Sea. If the Danube, in turn, flows from Eastern Europe through Central Europe into the North Sea, its value would have multiplied.
In other rivers in the world, shipping is relatively bad. The middle and lower Mekong rivers have good potential for navigation, but the region is too poor and the level of management coordination is very low, as is the case with the Paraná-La Plata River. The Amazon, Congo and Orinoco rivers have so much water that they grow in the rainforest – deserts for people and economies. The Ganges River in India is also located in the subtropical region, the water volume ranks among the top in the world, mainly in the plain area, the water flow is gentle, the river basin is extremely densely populated, it stands to reason that the demand for shipping is great, but due to soil erosion, improper governance, the level of infrastructure construction is negative, and the bridge is built indiscriminately, the navigation of this big river is basically abandoned.