Abstract: Free-flowing rivers, which provide a variety of ecosystem services, have important natural values and protection significance. China is in a stage of rapid development, at which the contradiction between river resources development and protection is increasingly prominent. Free-flowing rivers have not yet been systematically protected. In this paper, we use a series of data sets indicating different levels of river disturbances to evaluate rivers at China’s national scale, and make a spatial map of river distributions based on a river disturbance index. We divide the river disturbances into five levels, including the potential free-flowing rivers, low impact disturbance rivers, medium impact disturbance rivers, high impact disturbance rivers and strong impact disturbance rivers. They account for 6.85%, 5.37%, 24.39%, 19.89% and 43.5% of the river length in China respectively. The research intends to provide reference for river protection, watershed planning, ecosystem assessment, comprehensive planning of protected areas and territory development plan in China.