According to data from 11 tidal stations of the Yangtze estuary, this paper analyzes the mean high tide, mean low tide and mean sea level of each station from 1996 to 2011, and finds the recent change of tidal characteristics in the Yangtze estuary, analyzes related factors, discusses the reasons of recent changes of tidal characteristics in the Yangtze estuary. The results show that the mean sea level of each tidal station rises a little bit. The basin’s runoff change seems no influence on the estuarine tidal characteristic value. Global warming has some effect on the mean sea level change in the long term, but it has little impact in the short term. It is affected by the engineering construction of the Yangtze estuary in recent years, which shows that the mean high tide level is going down, the average low tide is rising, the tidal range is decreasing, the flood time is shortened, the ebb time is extended, and the annual lowest tide is rising. The Yangtze estuary is influenced by the runoff, tidal current and engineering construction, and the tide’s characteristic value changes along the way are also different, so we should pay more attention to the estuarine engineering design, flood control and river estuary management, etc.