The Yangtze River and its floodplain are unique for the extensive wetlands, recharged by summer monsoonal precipitation, laden with nutrients and sediment. It's the largest amount of shallow and seasonal flooded wetlands in the world, providing ecosystem services to tens of millions of people. The wetlands also support globally significant numbers of wintering waterbirds. Every year, more than 1 million waterbirds spend winter here. It is critical to understand the effects of different variables on wintering waterbirds diversity. So far, most of the research were focused on some National Nature Reserves, e.g. Lake Poyang, Lake Dongting and Lake Shengjin. The researches concerning wintering waterbirds diversity on lake wetlands located in the Lower Yangtze River floodplain in Jiangsu Province are still limited, where the economic is relatively developed. In this study, we systematically surveyed 10 representative wetlands along the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province from 2018 to 2020 and then analyzed the effect of ecological and anthropogenic factors on waterbird abundance, species richness and diversities. In total, 109998 waterbird of 42 species were recorded, belonging to 6 orders and 9 families. Of them, 22 species are Natatores and the others are all Waders. In terms of the biogeographic distribution, 16 species belong to Paleartics, 15 species are wide distributive species, 9 species belong to Paleartics-Oriental, and 2 species belong to Oriental. Among the 10 lake wetlands, Lake Shijiu has the highest Shannon-Wiener and Inverse-Simpson diversity index, and the lowest are Lake Changdang and Lake Kuncheng respectively. In addition, the community composition dissimilarity (β diversity) between Lake Shijiu and the other lakes are the highest, following by Lake Changdang. Results of the decomposition of β diversity suggested that species replacement was the main process influencing regional β diversity. Lake Shijiu had a significant higher relative contribution to regional β diversity, followed by Lake Changdang, while Lake Shanghu had the lowest relative contribution. Wintering waterbird abundance positively correlated with total area of wetlands but negatively affected by vegetation area and water area in the buffer area, as well as the effect of per capita GDP. Number of wintering bird species positively correlated with total area of lake wetlands but negatively affected by per capita GDP. Area had no effects on both Shannon-Wiener and Inverse-Simpson indices. As one of the most developed areas in China, unveiling the effects of different variables on wintering waterbirds diversity may not only offer practical conservation measures for this area, for example, carrying out continuous waterbird monitoring projects, detecting conservation gaps and playing close attention on landscape changes of surrounding area, but also provide a good sample for the conservation work in up-stream areas of the Yangtze River where the economic is ongoing developing.