Opening a New Chapter: Connecting Rivers to the Sea — On the Occasion of the Groundbreaking of the Three Gorges New Waterway Project
For centuries, the deep gorges, rapids, and turbulent currents of the Three Gorges region hindered the flow of people and goods between Bashu (Sichuan and Chongqing) and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The construction and operation of the Three Gorges Project turned the dream of a calm river and a waterway connecting to the sea into reality. Now, in response to the new demands of Yangtze River shipping development, the Three Gorges New Waterway Project has begun construction. Once completed, it will further unlock the golden waterway's potential, promote high-quality development of the Yangtze Economic Belt, and help build a new development paradigm. In the grand practice of reshaping the economic geography with a national megaproject, it will open a new chapter of development and inspire a new spirit of progress.
Born of the Times: Painting a New Picture of the Yangtze
In early summer, the Three Gorges dam area displays broad rivers and green banks. Not far away, at the construction site of the Three Gorges New Waterway, the leveled land is beginning to take shape. Rows of excavators stretch across the site, steel arms rising and falling in a rhythmic dance, their roar mingling with the river breeze — a bustling scene of intense activity.
Major projects link current demand with future supply and are vital to overall economic and social development.
In the "15th Five-Year Plan" outline, "building the Three Gorges New Waterway" is listed among the 109 major projects under "inland high-grade waterways." It is a strategic project to better implement the Yangtze Economic Belt development strategy and promote high-quality economic and social development along the river.
President Xi Jinping places great importance on promoting the development of the Yangtze Economic Belt. At the symposium on fully advancing the development of the Yangtze Economic Belt in November 2020, he pointed out that the Yangtze Economic Belt should become "the main battlefield for ecological priority and green development, the main artery for畅通 domestic and international dual circulation, and the main force leading high-quality economic development."
The Yangtze Golden Waterway is a crucial support for the development of the Yangtze Economic Belt. The Three Gorges–Gezhouba枢纽 reach is the throat of the entire waterway, affecting the flow of goods, industrial linkages, and economic circulation in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yangtze.
Building the Three Gorges New Waterway is turning a new page for the thousand-mile gorge.
In 1994, construction of the Three Gorges Project began; in 2003, the Three Gorges Dam began storing water, eliminating over 130 rapids, more than 40 one-way control sections, and 25 heavy-load towing sections. The 660-kilometer waterway from Yichang to Chongqing achieved a qualitative leap, upgrading from a Class III to a Class I waterway, and the tonnage of navigable ships increased from 1,000 to 3,000–5,000 tons.
Navigating became easy, and so it has been.
The Three Gorges dual-line five-step ship lock, built together with the dam, is embedded in the mountain like a piano key. As the water level rises and falls, 5,000-ton ships climb step by step up the "water staircase" and steadily enter the wide and calm high-gorge lake upstream.
"The Three Gorges Project fundamentally improved navigation conditions in the Three Gorges reservoir area and promoted the development of shipping in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze," said Zhang Chaoran, 86, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former chief engineer of China Three Gorges Corporation, who witnessed the great changes in the Yangtze waterway.
In 2011, the annual throughput of the Three Gorges ship lock exceeded 100 million tons for the first time, reaching the designed capacity 19 years ahead of schedule. By the end of 2025, the cumulative throughput of the Three Gorges hub exceeded 2.3 billion tons, with the highest annual throughput reaching 174 million tons, 70% above the original design level. This strongly supported the Yangtze River's status as the busiest and highest-capacity inland waterway in the world for many consecutive years.
Today, giant ships shuttle back and forth on the river, while in the anchorage, ships waiting to pass are neatly lined up in rows. The ease of navigation has brought new challenges — the recent pressure on traffic has become a major factor restricting Yangtze shipping and development along the river.
"In the past three years, through tapping potential and improving efficiency, the Three Gorges ship lock has passed an average of about 110 ships and 460,000 tons of cargo per day, operating stably under high load for a long time," said Huan Zhaoping, Party secretary of the Three Gorges Navigation Authority under the Ministry of Transport. The busy shipping has put pressure on the management. During special situations such as lock maintenance, the maximum number of waiting ships exceeds 2,200, and the average waiting time exceeds 200 hours.
Responding to development trends and the needs of the times, the Three Gorges New Waterway Project came into being.
As early as 2013, the state launched preliminary feasibility studies for the project. In 2016, the "13th Five-Year Plan" proposed promoting the construction of the new waterway to improve the comprehensive transportation system of the Three Gorges. That same year, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Outline of the Yangtze Economic Belt Development Plan," which called for research on building the new waterway and supporting projects at the Gezhouba Dam.
In 2021, the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the long-term goals for 2035 proposed deepening the preliminary feasibility study for the Three Gorges New Waterway.
In May 2025, the feasibility study report for the Three Gorges New Waterway Project was officially approved...
From conception to implementation, from planning to construction, another megaproject is taking shape on the main stem of the Yangtze River.
The Three Gorges New Waterway Project includes two parts: the new channel at the Three Gorges hub and the expansion of the Gezhouba shipping facilities. The total static investment is about 77.208 billion yuan. Upon completion, the Three Gorges hub will have four lock lines plus a ship lift, with an annual capacity of 336 million tons; the Gezhouba hub will have four lock lines, with an annual capacity of 360 million tons, a significant increase over the current level.
Niu Xinqiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief scientist of the Changjiang Survey, Planning, Design and Research Institute, made an analogy: the new channel will upgrade the upper Yangtze shipping from a "two-lane" to a high-standard multi-lane, increasing the number of navigation channels and comprehensively upgrading the ship classes that can pass.
Scaling New Heights: Tackling the Super Project
Walking through the construction site of the Three Gorges New Waterway, the steep cliffs and hard rock formations along the gorge, combined with the complex terrain adjacent to the Yangtze River, present a world-class challenge for the builders.
"For China, build the Three Gorges." On the flyleaf of Academician Zhang Chaoran's notebook, these eight characters are written in vigorous handwriting. This slogan, passed down for over 30 years, embodies the builders' belief. He said that the Three Gorges New Waterway Project must inherit the construction experience of the Three Gorges Project, Xiangjiaba, Xiluodu, Baihetan, and Wudongde hydropower stations, and scale new technological heights to build a world-class project.
Unprecedented engineering, unprecedented technical challenges.
"Many indicators of the new channel rank first in the world for inland river ship locks, making it a truly world-class project," said Niu Xinqiang.
Specifically, the new channel at the Three Gorges hub is located on the north side of the existing ship lock. It will build a new dual-line continuous five-step ship lock with a total line length of 6,680 meters, a single lock chamber length of 280 meters, and a bottom width of 40 meters, capable of navigating 10,000-ton ships. The construction period is 112 months (including 12 months of preparatory work).
The Gezhouba shipping expansion requires demolishing the existing No. 3 ship lock and building two new single-step ship locks, along with expanding and upgrading the approach channels. The construction period is 95 months (including 12 months of preparatory work).
The total earth and rock excavation is about 160 million cubic meters, and the concrete pouring is about 10 million cubic meters.
Niu Xinqiang noted that the Three Gorges New Waterway is an addition and modification of navigation facilities on an existing giant water conservancy hub. It faces many environmental constraints, significant construction limitations, complex hydraulic conditions, and extremely high precision in equipment installation, posing extreme challenges to the entire chain of design, construction, operation, and management.
Gao Peng, deputy chief engineer of China Three Gorges Corporation, further detailed the technical challenges. "A navigation head of 113 meters, a lock chamber width of 40 meters, 10,000-ton ships, and 1,440-ton miter gates..." These are not just numbers; they are new issues brought about by the scale of the project.
The challenges don't stop there.
Excavating huge lock chambers in hard rock "like cutting tofu" and ensuring the stability of high steep slopes and vertical walls are even more difficult.
Lu Wenbo, director of the Engineering Blasting Committee of the Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society and a professor at Wuhan University, explained that compared to the Three Gorges ship lock, which set a series of "world records," the new channel project has higher slopes and more complex underground caverns, making excavation and slope stability a greater challenge, directly affecting overall safety and construction quality.
The path of overcoming difficulties requires solving construction problems while also protecting the river's clear waters.
Ensuring minimal environmental impact during construction is a critical issue for the project.
Li Yongquan, deputy general manager of the Three Gorges New Channel Company, stated that the project will abandon the traditional "build first, treat later" model and adopt a "build, protect, and restore simultaneously" approach to comprehensively safeguard the ecological environment of the Yangtze River basin.
Reporters learned that for the protection of rare aquatic organisms, the project includes the construction of fish passage facilities to restore the ecological structure of the Yangtze waters and improve ecological connectivity. To avoid disturbing fish with underwater blasting, the efficient blasting process was abandoned in favor of mechanical excavation. "To avoid affecting the spawning grounds of the Chinese sturgeon, we changed the original plan, which alone increased investment by 2 billion yuan," Gao Peng said.
Ecological priority is also reflected in every plant and tree. During the early stages of the project, there was a special relocation.
The Gezhouba shipping expansion area is in an urban section of the river. The project boundary crossed over 3,200 trees that had to be relocated. Among them were 50-year-old yellow banyan trees that witnessed the rise of Gezhouba, and rows of camphor trees along the riverside road that shaded generations. After being numbered one by one, they were dug up from their original locations, transported, and settled in a new home — in the new soil of Yichang's Qiuyutai Park, where they continue to grow and preserve the city's green memory.
"All builders will adhere to the principle of protection first, jointly tackle technical difficulties, and make innovative breakthroughs in equipment, material selection, and high-strength earth-rock excavation, striving to create a quality and green project," said Yang Ning, chief engineer of the Three Gorges New Channel Company.
In the past, countless boat trackers fought against the raging waves to pull cargo ships through the Three Gorges rapids. Today, the builders of the Three Gorges New Waterway are striving to overcome one technical hurdle after another, opening a new pattern for Yangtze River shipping.
Dreaming of the Future: The River Surging with Renewed Vigor
Three kilometers downstream from Gezhouba, the Yichang Zhixi Yangtze River Bridge spans the river like a flying ribbon.
The name "Zhixi" originates from the Zhixi Pavilion. Ouyang Xiu, a former magistrate of Yiling County in Xiazhou, recorded in his essay "The Story of the Zhixi Pavilion in Xiazhou" that in ancient times, boatmen who survived the perilous journeys on the Yangtze felt a sense of rebirth upon reaching the Zhixi Pavilion, their joy overflowing. "Therefore, when boatmen arrive here, they inevitably pour wine and bow to each other in congratulations, believing they have been reborn."
History and the present meet again in the gorge. The word "Zhixi" bears witness to the hardships of Yangtze navigation over thousands of years, especially on the section through Sichuan, and also heralds a new era of surging rivers, connecting waterways, and reaching the sea.
Traveling upstream to the streets of Chongqing, we find common tastes like Zhongxian fermented bean curd served with rice or liquor, steaming hot bean curd rice, and cooking oil in every kitchen. Behind these ordinary flavors lie stories of journeys across the Yangtze waterway. When we expand our view from soybean oil on the dining table to bulk commodities like crude oil and ore, as well as industrial products such as wind turbine blades, energy storage converters, and new energy vehicles, a clear proposition emerges for inland cities: How to break the development fate of being "far from the sea"?
Looking at China's super logistics network, there are insurmountable cost differences between water, rail, road, and air transport. According to transportation department estimates, the per-ton-per-kilometer transport costs for Yangtze waterway, rail, and road show a scale difference of "cents, dimes, and yuan."
"Water transport has the natural advantages of large volume, low cost, and low energy consumption," said Zhang Chaoran. For container transport from Chongqing to Shanghai, the rail freight is 0.15 yuan/ton·km, road freight is 0.45 yuan/ton·km, while water freight is only 0.03 yuan/ton·km.
"The Three Gorges New Waterway breaks through a single point (the Three Gorges hub), smooths a line (the Yangtze waterway), and drives an area (the Yangtze basin)," said Zhang Yunchang, a first-level inspector of the Three Gorges Project Management Department of the Ministry of Water Resources. The new channel will strengthen the main axis of the Yangtze Economic Belt, balance economic development between east and west, smooth domestic and international dual circulation, lower logistics costs, and promote greener development.
"The new channel will more fully unleash the advantages of Yangtze shipping, enhance the capability of combined rail-road-water transport, and is expected to save an average of over 6 billion yuan in transport costs annually," said Niu Xinqiang. The capacity for direct river-sea transport will also be greatly improved, as 10,000-ton ships can reach the west directly, reducing transshipment mileage and boosting cost efficiency.
Beyond enhancing the functional value of the Yangtze Golden Waterway, the comprehensive benefits of the Three Gorges New Waterway are far-reaching and lasting.
The Yangtze Economic Belt covers 11 provinces and municipalities, and in 2025 its GDP accounted for 47% of the national total. The region has formed a new industrial layout dominated by metallurgy, electronics, machinery, automobiles, crude oil, and chemicals, with high-tech industries leading the way, creating the world's largest inland economic corridor.
"The navigation capacity of the Three Gorges hub directly affects the efficiency and cost of integrating the Chengdu-Chongqing Dual-City Economic Circle into the national unified market. It can effectively promote economic and social development and industrial transformation and upgrading in the upper Yangtze region, and foster a favorable situation of complementary advantages and coordinated development among the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yangtze. This is a major strategic significance of the new channel," said Wu Peng, a national engineering survey and design master and former chief engineer of CCCC Water Transportation Planning and Design Institute.
The golden waterway connects the upper and lower reaches, and the Yangtze Economic Belt soars like a dragon. Upstream, the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle "dragon tail" dances, as inland hinterlands become open highlands. Midstream, the high-quality development "dragon body" takes flight, with strategic emerging industries clustering. Downstream, the Yangtze River Delta "dragon head" rises high, accelerating the formation of a regional integrated development pattern.
The river surges forward, chasing dreams.
From millennia of dangerous shoals to smooth passages in a calm lake, the Yangtze River is constantly renewed in the waves of the times. The Three Gorges New Waterway, a national megaproject on the new journey of the "15th Five-Year Plan," will transform the poetic line "A thousand miles from east Wu, my boat is moored at the gate" into a more magnificent reality on the gorge.
The tide is calm, the banks are wide, and the sails are full. A golden waterway that connects inside and outside, is green and efficient, and empowers the future is surging forward with unstoppable momentum, carrying the grand dream of national rejuvenation and injecting a continuous river of strength into Chinese-style modernization.
Xinhua News Agency reporters: Dai Xiaohe, Xu Haibo, Li Siyuan
(According to Xinhua News Agency, Wuhan, June 8)
