Most of the rivers in the upper Yangtze River have high water head,rapid flow,large variation of water level.Serving as a navigation structure,ship lift cannot satisfy great traffic volume and lateral displacement limitation of tower column under earthquake,while traditional multistage ship lock has to deal with a series of problems:huge water consumption,poor flow regime in lower lock approach,etc.Water saving ship lock can effectively solve the problems above,however not enough experience has been gained domestically.Based on the water-saving ship lock scheme of the new channel of Three Gorges project,from the perspective of working principle of water-saving ship lock,this article sdudies structure selection,layout of water basins,structure elevation and scale are discussed in detail.Structure stability,conveyance efficiency of the scheme are analyzed,and superiority comparison to cascade ship lock scheme is expounded.