The Three Gorges project is the biggest dam in the world and China's biggest engineering project since the building of the Great Wall.
The Yangtze river is the third-longest river in the world at 6,300km. It originates in the south-western Qinghai province, then makes its way through Tibet and seven Chinese provinces, including Sichuan, Hubei and Jiangsu, before it enters the East China Sea just north of Shanghai.
The dam is 2,300m wide, 185m high. The normal storage level of water in the reservoir will be 175m.
There are 10,000 builders working on it currently as it comes to a close, though at its peak there were 60,000 workers.
The dam will cost around 20 billion, according to government estimates,
although some say it could end up costing a total of €60 billion.
The dam will control a drainage area of 1,000,000sq m.
The Chinese government says 1.13 million people have been relocated by the dam, although other analysts reckon this figure could be as high as two million people.
While not all of the hydropower generators have been completed, some of the 26 generators are already operating with limited capacity. At the moment, output is about 48 billion kilowatt hours, which is expected to more than double once all 26 generators - 14 on the left bank and 12 on the right - kick in.
Trials on the ship lock (left) show that between June 2003 and June 2004, 68,617 ships carrying two million passengers and 30 million tonnes of cargo passed through the lock.