Applicability of China’s First Generation of Global Land Surface Reanalysis Monthly Precipitation Products in the Yangtze River Basin

China’s first-generation global land surface reanalysis CRA monthly precipitation products offer a new boundary information source for basin hydrological analysis. Taking station observations in the Yangtze River Basin as a reference, we assessed the applicability of CRA products from aspects of temporal evolution, spatial distribution, and drought identification ability. The results reveal that CRA data can effectively capture the interannual variations and monthly distribution of areal precipitation in the Yangtze River Basin. The multi-year average precipitation derived from CRA data is only 1.2% lower than the observed data. The correlation coefficients of monthly data all exceed 0.9. Nevertheless, the efficiency coefficients during the main flood season (July and August) are below 0.9, slightly lower than those in other months. The applicability of CRA products shows significant spatial heterogeneity. The mainstream of the Yangtze River from Yibin to Hukou has the best applicability with minimal spatial variation within this region, while the Minjiang and Tuojiang Rivers has the lowest applicability with remarkable spatial variability. CRA data tend to underestimate the precipitation in high-value areas and overestimate the precipitation in low-value areas. Nonetheless, CRA products display strong capabilities in identifying various levels of drought events on an intra-annual scale. These findings provide a reference for analyzing and enhancing the accuracy of CRA products, facilitating their application in basin hydrology.