Chongqing—The 2026 Yangtze River Civilization Forum opened on September 15 at the Chongqing Yuelai International Convention Center, bringing together scholars, officials and diplomatic representatives from nearly 20 countries — including Egypt, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Australia and Mexico — for a conversation on how the world’s great river civilizations can learn from one another.

The 2026 Yangtze Civilization Forum opened in Chongqing on September 15. (Photo: Liu Li)

Co-hosted by the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the forum has adopted Crossing Rivers and Seas, Mutual Learning of Civilizations as its permanent theme. This year's agenda centers on exchanges between the Yangtze civilization and the world’s other great river civilizations, alongside global issues such as sustainable river basin development.

Scholars frame rivers as bridges between civilizations

Gao Xiang, president of CASS, said in his opening remarks that the Yangtze, rising on the "roof of the world" and running thousands of kilometers to the sea, has long sustained the movement of people, the spread of technology and the flow of trade between China and the rest of the world.

"Every wave of the Yangtze is a vivid footnote to exchange and mutual learning among civilizations,” Gao said, adding that the forum — by bringing together scholars from home and abroad to examine the shared origins, divergent paths and rise-and-fall patterns of great river civilizations — is a concrete practice of the Global Civilization Initiative and a useful exploration of different modernization paths.

Martin Jacques, the British scholar and Visiting Research Fellow at LSE's Asia Research Centre, told the forum that "a fundamental aspect of civilization is about rediscovering and exhuming the past."

"This Conference is exploring a fascinating manifestation of this: how the great rivers of the world have shaped humanity, the culture of those who live on their banks, the differences and commonalities their peoples share," Jacques said. "Rivers are bearers of change, they are the arteries of civilization, they enable contact and cross-fertilisation that otherwise would be impossible, they bring humanity together, they encourage cosmopolitanism and mixing rather than isolation and separation."

Also addressing the forum were Alaa Manshawy, Visiting Scholar, National Academy of Chinese Modernization, CASS and Member in the Board of the Faculty of Archaeology, Luxor University, former Director of Luxor Museum, Egypt; Bu Xianqun and Li Guoqiang, both members of the CASS Academic Divisions, with Li also serving as vice president of the Chinese Academy of History; and Meng Man, a professor at the School of History and Culture of Minzu University of China.

Yuan Jiajun, Secretary of the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee, said Chongqing will advance the creative transformation and innovative development of Yangtze culture, work with all partners to deepen the preservation and promotion of Yangtze civilization, promote exchanges and mutual learning among the world's river civilizations, boost culture-tourism integration, and strengthen cooperation on ecological governance — contributing to the flourishing of world civilizations and to a community with a shared future for mankind.

Cooperation extends from the Nile to the Amazon

The forum is generating cooperation as well as conversation.

In 2025, with dialogue between the Yangtze and the Nile serving as a bond, China and Egypt conducted in-depth exchanges on hydrological monitoring and cultural heritage and co-produced the documentary When the Yangtze Meets the Nile, telling the story of civilizations that were born of rivers and thrived by water. Chongqing’s Baiheliang hydrological inscriptions — ancient riverside carvings recording water levels on the Yangtze, often described as the world’s earliest hydrological station — are now pursuing a joint World Heritage inscription with the Nilometer on Roda Island in Egypt, linking two ancient traditions of measuring a river’s rise and fall.

In 2026, the dialogue extends to South America. The "When the Yangtze Meets the Amazon" initiative has been launched, with a new documentary, Rivers in Harmony, to be co-produced. Anchored in the ecological challenges humanity faces together, the film will explore how people and nature can coexist in harmony.

Chongqing institute unveils new research on Yangtze culture

Zou Fudu, vice president of Southwest University and dean of the Chongqing Yangtze River Culture Research Institute, released the institute’s first research results at the opening ceremony.

The first installment of the Yangtze Civilization Series: Upper Reaches of Great Rivers runs to five volumes and 1.6 million Chinese characters. Examining the upper Yangtze through nature, history, culture and society, the series distills distinctive elements of the region’s civilization — from the ancient Shu civilization and historic river rescue practices to terraced wharves, distilled spirits, lychee cultivation, parallel ridge-and-valley terrain, mid-river islands, river place names, fortified ethnic settlements, and plank roads and suspension bridges. Many of the studies are the first systematic treatments of their subjects.

The second result, the Compendium of Travel Writings on the Chuanjiang River and Shu Roads, comprises 140 volumes and more than 40 million Chinese characters. It brings together over 500 works in Chinese and foreign languages written by travelers and surveyors along the Chuanjiang, covering geology, hydrology, transport, the economy, customs and the environment — the first such compilation in China or abroad. The Chuanjiang and Shu Roads were themselves corridors of exchange between civilizations, and the compendium is expected to provide documentary support for the routes’ World Heritage bid.

A Bond between Great Rivers extends a standing invitation to river cities

The "A Bond between Great Rivers: Dialogue Among Civilizations" international communication project was also launched at the ceremony. Each year, it will link great river cities around the world, using film production, think-tank dialogues, youth exchanges and media visits to build bridges across civilizations.

A series of supporting events will run alongside the forum, including the 2026 World Great Rivers Concert, the 2026 World Great Rivers Poetry Gathering, the 10th Baidi City International Poetry Festival, Yangtze culture study tours, an academic exchange on the Wushan Longgupo site, a special concert and a drone performance.