The "15th Five-Year Plan" period is witnessing the coordinated advancement of both "hard investments" and "soft systems" in China, as the nation pushes forward 109 major projects to support national strategies and security capabilities. A key directive from the April Central Politburo meeting called for the rapid construction of "six networks": water networks, new power grids, computing networks, next-generation communication networks, urban underground pipelines, and logistics networks. As the initial year of this plan passes its midpoint, we examine the progress of these projects and their potential impact on our lives.
In late July, a construction site less than 2 kilometers from the Three Gorges Dam marked the starting point for the new Three Gorges navigation channel. While the site currently appears as an empty plot, a decade from now it will house a 6.6-kilometer waterway featuring a five-stage ship lock with chambers 280 meters long and 40 meters wide, equivalent to two standard football fields, and a minimum navigable depth of 8 meters. This will allow 10,000-ton vessels to pass through with ease. Gao Peng, Deputy Chief Engineer of the Three Gorges Group and Executive Director of the Three Gorges New Channel Company, stated that the new channel could save the national logistics sector nearly 16 billion yuan annually, while its impact on the flow of resources and industrial layout along the Yangtze River Economic Belt will be even more profound.
The original Three Gorges double-line ship locks, designed for a 100 million-ton capacity and expected to reach that level by 2030, actually surpassed it in 2011, 19 years ahead of schedule. By 2025, the throughput of the Three Gorges hub had reached 173 million tons, putting immense pressure on maintenance and slowing vessel transit. After over a decade of scientific论证, the new waterway project was finally launched this year, becoming the first major national project to begin in the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. Once completed, Gao Peng explains, the hub's cargo-passing capacity will reach 336 million tons annually. A month after the June groundbreaking, a visit to the initial excavation area with the project's management revealed the intensity of construction. Shangguan Fang, Deputy Director of the Three Gorges New Channel Engineering Management Department, described the 935-meter-long, 123-meter-high initial excavation zone, which will handle over 8.5 million cubic meters of earth, roughly one-twentieth of the total for the new channel. This area serves as a testing ground, accumulating experience for the main construction.
Why conduct tests when the Three Gorges already has ship locks? The unprecedented scale of building a new channel next to the existing hub requires it. Tests in the excavation zone cover equipment performance, blasting techniques, and earthwork management. After safety precautions, reporters documented a controlled blast where workers drilled holes, loaded electronic explosives, and detonated remotely. The explosion produced debris without significant displacement, allowing vehicles outside the blast zone to continue operating normally. Blasting is precise, and excavated soil and rock will be innovatively processed for green use. Shangguan Fang noted that all waste materials are classified, with topsoil stored for future revegetation and stone slag used as aggregate for concrete or for other purposes.
The Three Gorges water navigation channel is the largest comprehensive project on the Yangtze River since the original dam. Despite its scale, the site remains orderly, thanks to a smart construction management platform using BeiDou satellite navigation to monitor vehicle positions and operations in real-time. Ge Shoujie, Director of the Operations Management Department at the China Water Resources and Hydropower Fourth Bureau, explained that real-time data is uploaded to the platform for digital monitoring of the entire process. As excavation expands, the number of construction vehicles could multiply, with up to 1,000-2,000 operating simultaneously, requiring highly efficient scheduling.
Beyond the new channel, the project includes the Gezhouba navigation expansion. Designers must consider both the "big" issues of river navigation and the "small" concerns of aquatic life. Wang Xiao, Deputy Director of the Gezhouba Expansion Engineering Management Department, noted that the area is highly ecologically sensitive, serving as a spawning ground for Chinese sturgeon and a habitat for finless porpoises. The new two-line ship locks are being designed with an outlet that minimizes ecological impact while ensuring optimal navigation safety. Meanwhile, the relocation of 500 kV ultra-high-voltage transmission lines, which carry power from the Three Gorges Dam nationwide, is proceeding urgently to clear the way for new lock construction, marking China's first large-scale, long-distance relocation of such lines without power outages.
Major infrastructure projects serve as a stabilizing force for China's macroeconomy during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, bolstering national security, enhancing resilience, and embodying the principle of "investing in people." The April Central Politburo meeting's directive for the "six networks," including the new power grid, is central to building a new power system and energy framework. The grid will be based on main and distribution networks, supplemented by smart microgrids, forming a coordinated "main-distribution-micro" system. Li Hui, President of the State Grid Economic and Technology Research Institute, stated that the new grid's primary goal is to ensure safe, reliable power supply, enabling users to transition from having electricity to using green electricity efficiently. It must also be resilient, incorporating digital, intelligent, and AI technologies.
How is the new grid serving production and daily life in the initial year? In Zhejiang Province, one of China's most economically active regions, the focus is on the Gansu-Zhejiang ±800 kV ultra-high-voltage DC transmission project. Pei Chuanxun, Director of the Development Planning Department at State Grid Ningbo Power Supply Company, explained that the line will deliver 360 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually to Zhejiang via the Yuezhou converter station, with over 200 billion kWh from wind and solar sources. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, such UHV lines will form the backbone of the new grid, while distributed renewable energy sources increasingly connect to distribution and microgrids.
In late July, at a newly completed car park in Ningbo's Qianwan New District, workers were installing photovoltaic panels. As more distributed solar power connects to the urban grid, the distribution network, once solely for delivering power, has become bidirectional, creating new pressures. To manage this, a planning simulation platform was developed to optimize solar integration. Feng Yibin, Director of the Innovation Technology Office at State Grid Ningbo's Economic Research Institute, demonstrated how the platform compares connection plans, balancing user safety, grid resource efficiency, and network losses. By early August, Ningbo's distributed solar capacity, installed on factory and residential rooftops, had reached nearly 10 million kilowatts, equivalent to two large coal-fired power plants. On sunny days, solar has shifted from a supplementary source to a mainstay of power supply. However, Ningbo's coastal location brings frequent summer thunderstorms. When a cloud passes, what happens? On July 19, just after 11 a.m., a thunderstorm caused a sharp drop in solar output, but the dispatch center quickly coordinated with provincial and municipal levels to deploy other power resources, including UHV channels and urban distribution networks.
Microgrids are also being built in communities and factories, enabling precise control of devices and user habits. These function as virtual power plants, optimizing energy use through behavior adjustments. The ultimate goal is a more resilient power grid that avoids outages even during emergencies. Zhang Jiming, a grid automation expert at State Grid Ningbo Yinzhou Power Supply Company, reviewed fault recovery data from two typhoons in July. While the system, which automatically isolates faults, restored power to most users within two minutes, Zhang is not satisfied. Many high-tech companies are sensitive to power interruptions, which can scrap products. In the coming years, he plans to use AI for early detection of micro-symptoms, aiming for a grid that is always reliable and fault-free.
Throughout this investigation, it became clear that in the initial year of the plan, the "small" details behind major projects are receiving increasing attention: large projects broken into small units, data from every blast recorded, impacts on fish considered, and microgrids built alongside the main grid. It is the focus on these details that ensures steady progress for every major project, laying a solid foundation for Chinese-style modernization.
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