“The project, a new mega ship lock system at the Three Gorges Dam costing 77.2 billion yuan, or roughly US$11.4 billion, will take an estimated 112 months, just over nine years, to complete. At its core is a five-tier, dual-track series of giant ship locks, structures engineers and officials have taken to calling ‘water staircases’ or ‘water elevators,’ that will allow significantly larger vessels to traverse the dam more quickly and in far greater numbers.”
“The goal is to nearly double the dam’s annual cargo throughput capacity and relieve a shipping bottleneck that has grown so severe it is now openly described by China’s Ministry of Transport as a chokepoint threatening the country’s internal supply chains.”
“The Three Gorges already operates a five-stage lock and a ship lift, the latter raising vessels all at once in a single mechanical action rather than in steps. Both were designed and built based on shipping projections from the late 1990s. In 2025, the total cargo throughput passing through the Three Gorges Dam reached 173 million tonnes, far exceeding its designed capacity, making it both necessary and urgent to accelerate the construction of the new waterway project.”
“To appreciate what this project is meant to achieve, it helps to understand what the Yangtze River already does for China. The Yangtze River Economic Belt generates more than 40 per cent of the country’s total economic output, spans 11 provinces and municipalities, and supports nearly half the nation’s population. It is, in effect, the spinal column of China’s domestic supply chain, the route along which raw materials, industrial components, and finished goods move between the country’s coastal manufacturing hubs and its inland industrial centres.”