Kelly Haggart
August 6, 2002

Two shiplifts being built on a Yangtze River tributary are being seen as pilot projects for a similar structure planned for the Three Gorges dam, an official publication reports. The recent story in the Three Gorges Project Daily (Sanxia gongcheng bao) indicates that despite serious design-stage setbacks with the Three Gorges shiplift, planners still intend to go ahead with construction of the giant hoist that would ease vessels’ passage through the world’s biggest dam.

According to the original plan approved in 1992, the Three Gorges shiplift was to have been the world’s biggest, built by a German company and completed in June 2000. However, German engineers quoted in China Three Gorges Construction, an academic journal published by the Three Gorges Project Corp., said the technology involved in the shiplift was extremely complicated and even if such a large one could be built, there was no guarantee it would operate properly.

China now appears to be attempting to go ahead with a massive shiplift for the Three Gorges project without foreign assistance. However, information about this part of the scheme has been difficult to obtain, a fact that troubles environmentalist and journalist Dai Qing. “With the project on the verge of the third and final construction phase, it really is ridiculous that there has been no news about a final decision on how the shiplift will be designed and built,” she said.

Delays have plagued the shiplift, which would raise vessels up to the higher water level on the upstream side of the dam much more quickly than the five-stage shiplock now nearing completion at the Three Gorges site. The July 27 report in the Three Gorges Project Daily does not discuss the impact that delays with contructing the shiplift could have on Yangtze River navigation, the improvement of which has been cited as a chief justification for the dam. But the problems heighten concerns about shipping prospects along the Yangtze River, a major east-west artery of trade and commerce, after the Three Gorges dam is completed.

The two experimental shiplifts are being built at the Geheyan and Gaobazhou dams, which form part of a series of hydropower projects on the Qing River in Hubei province, about 100 kilometres downstream of the Three Gorges. Construction began on a two-step shiplift at Geheyan in 1994 and on a one-step lift at Gaobazhou in 2000, the Three Gorges Project Daily said.

Construction of those shiplifts is proceeding smoothly, and both are expected to go into operation in 2004, the publication said. Engineers are gaining experience in shiplift design, manufacture and operation that will be invaluable for the Three Gorges project, it added.

Both the Qing River structures can hoist 300-tonne vessels, about one-tenth the planned capacity of the Three Gorges shiplift, the report said. The shiplift that is currently China’s largest – at the Danjiangkou dam on the Han River, a Yangtze tributary in Hubei province – can lift 450 tonnes.

Meanwhile, China News Service reported Aug. 5 that a high-level inspection team has almost finished checking the two-way, five-stage shiplock at the Three Gorges site and expects to complete its task by Aug. 15, after which the testing stage could commence. The shiplock is the world’s biggest, unique in design and structure, and has accounted for two-fifths of all the earth-removal, concrete-pouring and other work at the Three Gorges construction site, the news agency said.