WUHAN — Major ports on the Yangtze, China's longest river, posted a total throughput of 2.02 billion metric tons of cargo in the first seven months of this year, up 1 percent year-on-year, according to navigation authorities.

The east-west inland waterway is regarded as the country's "golden shipping route."

Meanwhile, the throughput of twenty-foot equivalent unit containers shipped via the ports in the period reached 13.67 million, up 6 percent year-on-year, said the administration of navigational affairs on the Yangtze River under the Ministry of Transport on Aug 9.

The cargo throughput via the five-tier ship lock at the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project in the upper stream of Yangtze, reached a record high of 90.62 million tons during the Jan-July period, up 6.2 percent year-on-year.

The Three Gorges project, which became operational in 2003, consists of a dam measuring 2,309 meters long and 185 meters high, and five-tier ship locks on the northern and southern sides.