Backed by the vast southwest, facing the Beibu Gulf, and linked by land and sea to ASEAN, Guangxi was once seen as a transportation dead end. Today, cargo ships set sail from its ports, tokens flow out from its shores, and industries thrive across its territory. The land of Guangxi is presenting four business cards to the world — location, canal, AI, and industry — all telling the same story: striving toward the sea.
Location Card: From Remote Borderland to Frontline
Location is an endowment, but it only pays off through openness. When the first China-ASEAN Expo was held in 2004, trade between China and ASEAN stood at $105.88 billion; by 2025, that figure reached $1.05 trillion, nearly ten times the original amount. ASEAN has remained Guangxi's largest trading partner for 26 consecutive years. In Pingxiang, inside the country's first standardized fruit laboratory at a border port, inspection time for imported and exported fruit has been cut by 40%, and per-container customs clearance costs have dropped by nearly 2,000 yuan. Fresh fruit picked in Vietnamese and Thai orchards can enter through Guangxi ports and reach domestic supermarket shelves within as little as 48 hours. From January to August this year, Guangxi ports imported approximately 30.45 billion yuan worth of ASEAN fruit, up 13.2%, accounting for more than one-third of the national total. One out of every two imported durians in China enters through Guangxi. The radius of openness extends beyond ASEAN. From January to August, Guangxi's total imports and exports with ASEAN reached 284.69 billion yuan, accounting for more than half of its foreign trade; trade with Africa, the EU, and Latin America grew by 23.8%, 27.5%, and 33.2% respectively. Ding Jinxue, director of the Comprehensive Research Office at the Comprehensive Transportation Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated that Guangxi is China's only province connected to ASEAN by both land and sea, serving as the frontier and window for China's opening-up and cooperation with ASEAN, and its position and role in the nation's broader opening-up landscape are becoming increasingly prominent.
Canal Card: Pinglu Canal Connects Rivers to the Sea
A single whistle, and rivers meet the sea. In September this year, the Pinglu Canal opened to navigation. This is the first canal project built since the founding of New China that connects a river to the sea, directly linking the Xijiang golden waterway with the Beibu Gulf international gateway port. Goods from the southwest shipping out through this route save more than 560 kilometers of inland waterway distance compared to detouring through Guangzhou, reduce comprehensive logistics costs by 18% to 30%, and save over 5 billion yuan in transportation expenses annually. The canal must be "built well," but more importantly, it must be "operated well" and "deliver good returns." Guangxi is using Beibu Gulf Port as its land-sea gateway, the Pinglu Canal Economic Belt as a key link, and the New Western Land-Sea Corridor as a strategic driver to attract more resources and industries to the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone, propelling the New Western Land-Sea Corridor from a transportation line to an economic network, and better serving the construction of a new development pattern through land-sea coordination and internal-external connectivity.
AI Card: Forging a Different Path to Leapfrog Development
In smart factories, intelligent robots are on duty; beside blast furnaces, large models assess smelting parameters in real time; on assembly lines, AI production scheduling systems are proving their worth. In terms of computing power and algorithms, Guangxi does not lead, yet it has carved out a differentiated path: R&D in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, integration in Guangxi, and application in ASEAN. Its hub is the China-ASEAN AI Application Cooperation Center, which began construction in September 2025. Here, Chen Xiujuan, corporate management director of Jiejia Run Technology Group Co., Ltd., told reporters that the company is deeply engaged in smart agriculture, building cross-border agricultural intelligent decision-making platforms such as the Agricultural Digital Brain and "Tudi AI-Max," covering the entire chain from pre-production to production to post-production, and adaptable to the differentiated climates, soils, and planting models of multiple ASEAN countries. "This integrated solution has served over 2 million mu of farms, landed 30 agricultural projects in Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and other countries, with business extending to Australia and Nigeria," Chen said. Currently, more than 300 AI enterprises have invested and established operations in Guangxi, facilitating 43 cross-border cooperation projects with Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and other countries; in 2025, the output value of Guangxi's core AI industry in the industrial sector exceeded 89 billion yuan. The channels for AI going overseas are multiplying. In June 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved the establishment of an international communications service gateway in Nanning — the fourth nationwide after Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and the first addition in 30 years; 12 cross-border international land communication optical cables and 3 international submarine cables have been completed. The institutional framework for AI going overseas is also advancing. Guangxi has issued the first negative list for data export in central and western China and border regions, and the sixth nationwide, and is researching and formulating three specialized lists covering corpus training, model development and delivery, and token export. At the Runjian Co., Ltd. Wuxiang Cloud Valley Intelligent Computing Center in Nanning, reporters learned that it has upgraded from renting computing power by card-hours to operating as a Token Factory. Data latency from Nanning to ASEAN is about 15 to 20 milliseconds, and to Singapore about 20 milliseconds. "Within 50 milliseconds, humans basically cannot perceive it — this is Guangxi's geographical advantage," said Li Linqiang, general manager of Runjian's public affairs department.
Industry Card: Turning Corridor Advantages into Winning Streaks
Turning corridor advantages into industrial advantages is the focal point of Guangxi's drive toward the sea. Look at Liuzhou: in the first half of this year, exports reached 23.25 billion yuan, up 23.3%; exports of lithium batteries and electric vehicles to ASEAN surged by 819% and 314.7% respectively. Even a bowl of luosifen has crossed the ocean, with exports reaching 45.745 million yuan in the first half, up 19.6%. At Liuzhou Railway Port, export assembly, port functions, and customs clearance services have all been moved forward to the factory gates of manufacturing enterprises. Liuzhou Railway Port serves both as the export gateway for Liuzhou-made products and as a transshipment hub for global goods entering the southwestern hinterland. Look at the Beibu Gulf: high-end metal new materials, green chemical new materials, electronic information, and other industries are accelerating their clustering. Guangxi's gross ocean product grew from 137.7 billion yuan in 2017 to 268.78 billion yuan in 2025, with its share of regional GDP rising from 7.7% to 9%. Today's Guangxi is not only the nation's sugar jar and fruit platter, but has also cultivated 10 industries worth over 100 billion yuan each, including non-ferrous metals, machinery, and electronic information. From January to August this year, exports of automobiles and auto parts grew by 32%, imports of bulk commodities such as copper ore and aluminum ore grew by more than 40%, and the pilot scale of bonded copper concentrate blending remained first nationwide; in the first half, the gross ocean product reached 137.7 billion yuan, up 6.8% year-on-year. Guangxi's four business cards are interlocking: location attracts corridors, corridors support industries, AI gives industries wings, and industries in turn give location greater weight. Prospering toward the sea and striving toward the sea, the story of Guangxi's openness is turning a new page.