In 2003, the Three Gorges Project realized the three major goals of water storage, navigation opening and power generation smoothly. The comprehensive efficiency played its primary role. The project has smoothly come to the third stage in which construction, production and operation are made simultaneously.

On April 16, the third stage of the RCC cofferdam that controls the whole period of construction reached the height of 140m, 45 days ahead of the schedule. In late May, the State Inspection and Acceptance Commission of the Three Gorges Project held meeting and the second stage of the project passed acceptance smoothly. On June 1, the reservoir started to store water. The water level reached 135m by June 10. The two-way 5-stage lock was tested for navigation successfully on June 18 and the traffic was officially opened to social vessels. The first batch of hydrogenerator units on the left bank was put into operation in July and 6 sets of the units were officially combined to the grid by the end of 2003. In order to have the project play the role of its comprehensive efficiency even better, the water level of the reservoir was lifted to the height of 139m starting from November 5 as approved by the State Commission of the Three Gorges Project Construction.

In 2003, the engineering work completed in the Three Gorges Project was: digging of 3.4217 million m³ of earth and stones, filling and construction of 7.2549 million m³ of earth and stones, concrete pouring of 2.2458 million m³, 20,831 tons of metal structure and electronic machine buried and installed, 1,032.9 tons of generator sets buried, 20,701 tons of generator sets installed, 4,166 m³ of bitumen concrete wall, 115,201m of fixing grouting, 14,035.6m of curtain grouting and 23,437m² of joint grouting.

As shown by the monitoring data of safety indexes gathered after the water storage period in the second stage of the Project, all the constructions are in good status and working performance. All the indexes are kept within the designed allowable level. In 2003, the Three Gorges Power Plant generated 8.6 billion kW/h, over the planned amount for the whole year. By the end of 2003, the two-way lock had completed 4,386 times of on-loading safe passage of 34,880 t/v carrying 1.08 million t/p and 13.76 million tons of cargoes. The navigation through the dam area was safe, smooth and orderly.

In the period of navigation interruption, transshipment over the dam realized the target of "safe, smooth and orderly" pointed out by the State Council. No serious injury and fatal accidents had happened. As accumulated in the whole year, 1,203,136 t/p of passengers, 117,180 rolling vehicles, 9,410 standard containers, 6,820 commodity vehicles and 11,690 tons of other goods were transshipped over the dam.