On this day, 55 years ago, on December 25, 1970 (November 27, 1970 in the lunar calendar), Mao Zedong approved the construction of the Gezhouba Project. On December 25, 1970, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong approved the construction of the Yichang Yangtze River Gezhouba Project. In October 1969, when Mao Zedong listened to the idea of building the Three Gorges Dam put forward by Zeng Siyu, commander of the Wuhan Military Region, and Liu Feng, political commissar of the Wuhan Military Region, in Wuhan, he said that it was inappropriate to make such an idea during the current war preparations. Since then, in order to solve the problem of third-line construction and production electricity in western Hunan, western Hubei, western Henan, eastern Sichuan and other regions, the Wuhan Military Region, the Ministry of Water and Electricity, and the Yangtze River Basin Planning Office turned to the idea of renovating the Gezhouba Low Dam in Yichang downstream of the Three Gorges to use runoff power generation, which can not only avoid the danger of inundating the downstream by wartime bombing, but also strive to increase shipping and power generation in a shorter period of time. After exploration and testing, in October 1970, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed the construction of Gezhouba Project. In November, the Politburo discussed and approved in principle the report, calling for more testing and research to produce reliable dam engineering data. On the 25th, Mao Zedong read the "Reply of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Construction of Yichang Gezhouba Water Conservancy Project" and wrote: "In favor of building this dam." Now the paper assumes it's one thing. There will be some unexpected difficulties during the construction process, which is another thing. At that time, you have to prepare to modify the design." At the beginning of 1971, the main project of Gezhouba was launched hastily. Due to unresolved major technical problems, construction had to be suspended at the end of 1972. The project resumed in the fourth quarter of 1974. In April 1975, the Yangtze River Basin Planning Office officially proposed a revision of the preliminary design plan. It was not until January 1981 that the first phase of the project was basically completed and began to exert its benefits.