The Three Gorges ship lock sees its cargo throughput reaching 1.6 billion tons

The Three Gorges ship lock have handled 912,500 ships with 12,273,700 passengers on board and shipped 1.604 billion tons of cargo in 172,700 times of operation as of June 18, 2021, since it went into operation on June 18, 2003, according to its managing authority.

The cargo throughput is equivalent to 61,708,000 40-foot containers, the total length of which is 18.5 times the length of the earth (40,075.02 km).

In 2003, the ship lock officially began trial operation when the Three Gorges Project reached an impoundment level of 135 meters. After the impoundment level hit 175 meters, the natural navigation conditions featuring narrowness, curvature, shallowness and dangers have been fundamentally improved, turning the upper reaches of the Yangtze River (Sichuan section) that was not optimal for night navigation into a "highway on a waterway". The per-kWh towing capacity of ships in the Three Gorges Reservoir area has reached 4 to 7 tons, compared to the level of 1.5 tons before the construction of the reservoir, and the average fuel consumption per 1,000 ton km has declined from 7.6 kg, the level before the impoundment, to 2.0 kg.The safety of ship navigation in the reservoir area has also been greatly enhanced.The average number of traffic accidents on the mainstream of the Yangtze River in the reservoir area has been reduced by about 2/3 after the impoundment, and the number of major traffic accidents is about 1/17 of the number recorded before the impoundment. The Three Gorges ship lock is in full operation throughout the year, allowing 10,000-ton vessels to reach Chongqing directly and turning the waterway of the Yangtze River into a “golden waterway”.

The annual cargo throughput of the Three Gorges ship lock hit a peak of 146 million tons in 2019, 8.1 times the previous record of 18 million tons prior to the impoundment. It has seen its annual one-way cargo throughput topping 50 million tons for 10 consecutive years and its annual two-way cargo throughput surpassing 100 million tons for 7 consecutive years since 2011, greatly promoting the rapid development of the Yangtze River shipping industry and the economy along the river.