BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- China's 6,300-kilometre-long Yangtze River has become the world's busiest freshwater route, with its annual freight volume surpassing those of the Mississippi of the United States and the Rhine of Europe, said the Chinese Ministry of Communications.

    Cao Desheng, vice director of the ministry's Water Transport Department, said that the annual freight volume of the Yangtze River is now 1.6 times that of the Mississippi, which stands at 460 million tons.

    The freight volume is also 2.3 times that of the Rhine, said Cao.

    Cao said the Yangtze River has been the most important inland waterway in China, which transported 80 percent of the total cargoes shipped on China's all inland waterways.

    By the end of 2004, major ports along the Yangtzr River handled a total of 640 million tons of cargoes, 2.8 times that of the year 1995.

    As the largest river in China and the third largest river in the world, the Yangtze River starts at the foothills of the 6,621-meter snow-covered Geladandong, the main peak of the Tanggula Mountains in Qinghai Province.

    The river flows past Qinghai, Tibet, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai, where it empties into the East China Sea. Important cities along the way are Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai.

    The total gross domestic product (GDP) of all cities along the Yangtze River accounts for 41 percent of the national total, according to governmental statistics. Enditem