China broke ground on June 8 on a 77.2 billion yuan (about $11.3 billion) expansion of the Three Gorges Dam ship-lock complex, the first major infrastructure project to launch in the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030). Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the ceremony in Yichang, Hubei Province.
Project Doubles Yangtze Throughput
The project adds a new five-tier, dual-track ship lock north of the existing Three Gorges lock and upgrades downstream navigation facilities. Once complete, annual cargo throughput on the Yangtze River will nearly double to 336 million tonnes. The new lock will be the world's largest inland ship lock by capacity.
"The Three Gorges new waterway is a landmark project for high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt," Ding was quoted by Xinhua as saying. He called it a "critical step toward basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035."
First Major 15th Five-Year Plan Project
The groundbreaking signals Beijing's infrastructure priority for the 2026–2030 plan period: upgrading strategic transport corridors to sustain industrial upgrading. The Yangtze, the world's third-longest river, carries the bulk of China's inland freight. The existing Three Gorges lock has operated near capacity for years, creating a bottleneck for commodities, containers, and bulk cargo moving between Chongqing, Wuhan, and Shanghai.
The new dual-track design allows simultaneous two-way traffic, eliminating the current alternating-passage constraint. Construction is expected to take approximately five years.
MIIT Unveils AI-Information Integration Roadmap
Separately, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released a three-year implementation guideline (2026–2028) on June 10 to integrate artificial intelligence with the information and communications sector. The plan targets "initial stage of high-level autonomous intelligence" for info/comms networks by 2028, with more than 30 high-value use cases and at least 75 percent coverage of 1-millisecond-latency computing-power access in metropolitan areas.
By 2030, MIIT aims for significant breakthroughs in core technologies and a complete collaborative innovation and industrial ecosystem. The 17 tasks span intelligent network architecture upgrades, AI-driven large and small model collaboration, multi-agent systems, and network resource scheduling.
China-Morocco Zero-Tariff Trade Expo Opens
On June 10, the China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo (CAETE) Morocco session opened in Casablanca, the first major overseas CAETE event since China implemented zero tariffs for 53 African countries with diplomatic ties. Bilateral trade reached $10.96 billion in 2025, up from $9.04 billion in 2024, making China Morocco's third-largest global partner and largest in Asia. The Mohammed VI Tangier Tech City hosts 34 Chinese firms with $3.5 billion in planned investment.
Source: State Council of the People's Republic of China, Xinhua News Agency
