Poyang Lake, Dongting Lake, and Honghu Lake are the three largest freshwater lakes connected to the Yangtze River in the middle reach of the river basin.
Whenever flooding of the Yangtze River becomes a serious problem, Chinese authorities tend to sacrifice rural areas and townships dotted around these lakes. In other words, floodwaters would be diverted into these towns and villages, in an effort to save heavily populated metropolitan areas along the Yangtze River, such as Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai.
