It is known that understanding the development status of the manufacturing industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt scientifically and the trend of industrial transfer or undertaking along the Yangtze River Economic Belt is very important for promoting the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt as a whole. By using the shift-share analysis method,this paper computes respectively the industrial structure components,competitiveness components and deviation components of 27 manufacturing sub-sectors in the nine provinces and two cities of the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2005 to 2010 and from 2011 to 2015. The development types of the 27 manufacturing industry subdivisions are discriminated and the evolution characteristics are analyzed so as to get the trend of the industry transfer-undertaking in the belt,and corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are proposed. The results show that the manufacturing industry competitiveness of two provinces and one municipality directly under the Central Government in the lower reaches has weakened to a different degree,especially Shanghai and Zhejiang,so the traditional manufacturing industry needs industrial transfer urgently. The overall development trend of the manufacturing in the middle reaches is still good. However,it is necessary to speed up the transformation from big provinces to strong ones of manufacturing. It is necessary to change the industrial undertaking status and some industries with weakened competitiveness also need to be transferred. The competitive advantages of the manufacturing of three provinces and one municipality directly under the Central Government in the upper reaches are relatively insufficient. Among them,the manufacturing development advantage of Sichuan is the least obvious. While most of the manufacturing sub-sectors in Chongqing,Guizhou and Yunnan are relatively well developed,who become the important areas to undertake the transfer of manufacturing industry from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.