Yangtze River raw water from Yangshupu Water Plant, Shanghai was studied in this paper for reduced formation potential of chlorination and chloramination disinfection by-products (DBPs) after pre-oxidation by three kinds of common pre-oxidants, whiich were potassium permanganate, chlorine and chlorine dioxide. Results of chlorination showed that removal effectiveness of all the selected oxidants on total chlorination DBPs was not significant, and the reduction percentages by ClO2, Cl2 and KMnO4 were 8.4%, 5.7% and 3.9%, respectively. The order of DBPs control effect was ClO2, > Cl2 > KMnO4. As to Yangtze River raw water in case of chlorine disinfection, using ClO2 as pre-oxidation agent showed relatively better effect on removal of DBPs. However, chloramination results demonstrated that impacts of the three preoxidants on DBPs formation potential were quite different, and the reduction percentages by ClO2 and KMnO4 were 18.1% and 4.1%, respectively, while pre-chlorination increased the potential by 12.3%. These results revealed that ClO2 had the highest removal effectiveness, meanwhile pre-chlorination should be avoided due to its notable increase in DBPs formation.