Abstract: Relying on the golden waterway to build the Yangtze River Economic Belt is a major national development strategy in China. With the economic and social development, higher demands have been proposed on the Yangtze River navigation channel, therefore, it is urgent to study the carrying capacity of the navigation channel. Based on the characteristics of the lower Yangtze River, the concept of the carrying capacity of the navigation channel is proposed, and a preliminary evaluation system and an evaluation method are established. In this study, based on the analysis of the constraint factors of the navigation channel between the HuKou and Nanjing reaches in the lower Yangtze River, an evaluation system for the carrying capacity of the navigation channel was constructed using the "Driving force-State-Influence" (DSI) model and the analytic hierarchy method. This system includes four levels - the target level, the criteria level, the feature level, and the indicator level. In order to determine the index weight, a judgment matrix of each level was constructed and a consistency test was carried out. Then, the quantification method was discussed, the weight value for each index was given and the indexes were standardized. Finally, a preliminary comprehensive evaluation method for determining the carrying capacity of the navigation channel was proposed, to provide a basis for further evaluation of the carrying capacity of the navigation channel in the low reaches of the Yangtze River.