The development of modern drainage patterns in eastern Tibet is closely related to uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia. When and how this river formed is still vigorously debated. Here we compile published detrital zircon UPb ages from the Chuxiong, Sichuan, Jianghan, Jianchuan, Simao, Vientiane, Song Hong-Yinggehai basins, marginal sea basins in East China and Taiwan to reconstruct the evolution of the Yangtze River. Reassessment of published detrital zircon data from the broader region sheds new light on the development of the Yangtze. Detrital zircon data from the Jianghan Basin, marginal sea basins in East China and Taiwan suggest that the pre-Miocene Yangtze River did not include the present upper reaches. The detrital zircon ages from the Song Hong-Yinggehai Basin suggest that the upper Yangtze River did not flow southward into the Red River since the Oligocene. Instead, similarities in detrital zircon UPb ages between the Sichuan, Chuxiong and Simao basins imply that the paleo-upper Yangtze flowed southwestward into the Vientiane Basin via the Chuxiong and Simao basins before the Miocene. The appearance of Cenozoic zircons in the Miocene sediment in the Jianghan Basin suggests that the southwestward-flowing paleo-upper Yangtze River was captured by the mid-lower Yangtze between the late Oligocene and the early Miocene.