Abstract: The Yangtze River channel is the main logistics channel of the Yangtze River and an important link for regional economic coordination. At present, there are many researches on the relationship between transportation infrastructure and economic growth, but few literatures take the Yangtze River waterway as the research object to explore its influence on economic growth. We drew a causal diagram to qualitatively analyze the interaction between the Yangtze River waterway and the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and to clarify the mechanism of the waterway construction in promoting regional economic growth. We selected the time series data from 2005 to 2009, and used the extended C-D production function model to quantitatively calculate the economic contribution of investment in the Yangtze River waterway construction to the Yangtze River Economic Belt. On the whole, the contribution of economy shows an increasing trend year by year. The economic output of the Yangtze River Economic Belt increases by 1.74 percentage points for every 1 percentage point increase in the input for the construction of the Yangtze River waterway. The results show that the construction of the Yangtze River waterway plays a significant role in supporting the Yangtze River economy. In order to better facilitate the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, more investment should be put into the construction of the Yangtze River waterway in the future to improve its carrying capacity, and at the same time, more attention should be paid to scientific and technological innovation and ecological protection.