Abstract: In recent years, the Changjiang River shipping has achieved remarkable development, with the mainstream freight volume constantly ranking first in the world for 19 years. However, the advantages and potential of the Changjiang River shipping have not been fully released due to several shipping bottlenecks such as the upstream high dam obstruction of the Jinsha River, the midstream lock bottleneck of the Three Gorges dam and the shallow channel depth of the Jingjiang River, as well as the downstream channel overloading and supersaturation of the Changjiang River estuary. To solve these shipping blockages and jams, four major projects including the High Dam Navigation Project in the downstream of the Jinsha River, the New Navigation Channel Project for the Three Gorges Dam, the Jinghan Canal Project, and the Channel Capacity Enhancement Project for the Changjiang River estuary were proposed. Through adding high dam navigation structures for the hydropower cascades of the downstream Jinsha River, constructing new large ship locks of 10 000 tons for the Three Gorges Dam and Gezhouba Dam, building a high-grade artificial canal from Jingzhou City to Wuhan City, and promoting the construction of the "one main, two auxiliary, and one branch" waterway system at the Changjiang River estuary, so a high standard waterway from Shanghai City to Panzhihua City will be constructed which enhances the overall shipping capacity of the Changjiang River. Moreover, key technical challenges for the Changjiang River shipping development were explored in this paper, involving high dam navigation construction, expansion of navigation structures, construction of large-scale artificial canals, and ecological and intelligent waterway construction, which shows the way for high-quality development of the Changjiang River shipping.