In Depth: Why China’s Longest River Is Being Drained

Flooding and drought, and the increasingly rapid shifts between the two are causing the water level of China’s mighty Yangtze River to fluctuate dramatically.

Zhan Guisheng, a caretaker of a monitoring barge in Wuhan, Hubei province, which straddles the Yangtze’s main channel in Central China, saw the river’s water level reach a near record high of 28 meters in July before falling almost 15 meters in two months.