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Limited seats available, first come first served. Let us go together to the appointment with sustainability! [Click to register] Reprinted from: Economic Daily.

Location Business Card: Yesterday's Borderland, Today's Frontier

Location is an endowment, but realizing it depends on openness. When the first China-ASEAN Expo was held in 2004, trade between China and ASEAN stood at US$105.88 billion; by 2025, that figure reached US$1.05 trillion, nearly 10 times that of the earlier year. ASEAN has remained Guangxi's largest trading partner for 26 consecutive years.

In Pingxiang, inside the country's first standardized fruit professional laboratory at a border port, inspection time for imported and exported fruit has been cut by 40 percent, and customs clearance cost per container has dropped by nearly 2,000 yuan. Fresh fruit picked in orchards in Vietnam and Thailand can enter through Guangxi ports and be placed on domestic supermarket shelves in as little as 48 hours. From January to August this year, Guangxi ports imported about 30.45 billion yuan of ASEAN fruit, up 13.2 percent, accounting for more than one-third of the national total. Of every 2 imported durians in China, 1 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; total imports and exports with Africa, the EU, and Latin America grew by 23.8 percent, 27.5 percent, and 33.2 percent respectively. Ding Jinxue, director of the Comprehensive Research Office of the Comprehensive Transportation Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, said Guangxi is China's only province connected to ASEAN by both land and sea, and is the frontier and window for the country's opening-up and cooperation with ASEAN, with its status and role in the overall national opening-up pattern becoming increasingly prominent.

China-ASEAN Commodity Convergence Center. Photo by Zhu Huichun.

With a blast of a ship's whistle, river and sea are connected. In September this year, the Pinglu Canal opened to navigation. This is the first canal project built since the founding of New China to connect a river to the sea, directly linking the Xijiang golden waterway with the Beibu Gulf international gateway port. Goods from the southwest exported through this route have their inland river voyage shortened by more than 560 kilometers compared with detouring through Guangzhou, with comprehensive logistics costs reduced by 18 percent to 30 percent, saving more than 5 billion yuan in transport costs each year.

The canal must be "built well," and even more so "operated well" and "made profitable." With the Beibu Gulf Port as its sea-land gateway, the Pinglu Canal Economic Belt as an important link, and the New Western Land-Sea Corridor as a strategic driver, Guangxi is promoting the concentration of more resources and industries in the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone, driving the New Western Land-Sea Corridor to leap from a "transport line" to an "economic network," and better serving the construction of a new development pattern in the coordination of land and sea and the linkage of domestic and international markets.

Pinglu Canal scenery. File photo.

In smart factories, intelligent robots are on duty; beside blast furnaces, large models judge smelting parameters in real time; on assembly lines, AI scheduling systems show their prowess. In terms of computing power and algorithms, Guangxi does not lead, yet it has forged a differentiated path of "R&D in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou + integration in Guangxi + application in ASEAN." Its hub is the China-ASEAN National Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center, launched in September 2025.

Here, Chen Xiujuan, enterprise management director of Jiejianrun Technology Group Co., Ltd., told reporters that the company has deeply cultivated smart agriculture and built cross-border agricultural intelligent decision-making platforms such as the Agricultural Digital Brain and "Tudi AI-Max," covering the entire chain before, during, and after production, and adaptable to the differentiated climate, soil, and planting models of multiple ASEAN countries. "This integrated solution has already served more than 2 million mu of farms, landed 30 agricultural projects in Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and other countries, and extended its business to Australia and Nigeria," Chen Xiujuan said.

At present, more than 300 artificial intelligence enterprises are investing and operating in Guangxi, and 43 cross-border cooperation projects have been facilitated 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 global are multiplying. In June 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved the establishment of an international communications business gateway office 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 systems for AI going global are keeping pace. Guangxi has issued the first negative list for data outbound transfer in the central and western regions and border areas, and the sixth nationwide, and has studied and formulated 3 special lists around corpus training, model development and delivery, and token going global.

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-hour to a "Token Factory." The latency of data 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," introduced Li Linqiang, general manager of the Public Affairs Department of Runjian Co., Ltd.

Industry Business Card: Corridor Advantages Turned into Winning Momentum

Turning corridor advantages into industrial advantages is the focal point of Guangxi's drive to grow strong by facing the sea. Look at Liuzhou: in the first half of this year, exports reached 23.25 billion yuan, up 23.3 percent; exports to ASEAN of lithium batteries and electric vehicles surged by 819 percent and 314.7 percent respectively. Even a bowl of luosifen has crossed the ocean, with exports of 45.745 million yuan in the first half of the year, up 19.6 percent.

At Liuzhou Railway Port, export assembly, port functions, and customs clearance services have all been moved forward to the "workshop door" of manufacturing enterprises. Liuzhou Railway Port serves both as the sea outlet for "Made in Liuzhou" and as a transfer station for "global good products" entering the southwestern hinterland.

Look at the Beibu Gulf: industries such as high-end metal new materials, green chemical new materials, and electronic information are accelerating their clustering. Guangxi's gross ocean product increased from 137.7 billion yuan in 2017 to 268.78 billion yuan in 2025, and its share of regional GDP rose from 7.7 percent to 9 percent.

The picture shows a corner of the smart factory of Guangxi Liugong Machinery Co., Ltd. Photo by Wei Jiayue.

Today's Guangxi is not only the country's "sugar jar" and "fruit plate," but has also cultivated 10 trillion-yuan-level industries including nonferrous metals, machinery, and electronic information. From January to August this year, exports of automobiles and spare parts grew by 32 percent, imports of bulk commodities such as copper ore sand and aluminum ore sand grew by more than 40 percent, and the scale of the copper concentrate bonded blending pilot remained first in the country; in the first half of the year, gross ocean product reached 137.7 billion yuan, up 6.8 percent year on year.

These four business cards of Guangxi are interlinked: location attracts corridors, corridors support industry, AI gives industry wings, and industry in turn gives location more weight. Prospering toward the sea and striving for strength toward the sea, the story of openness on the land of Bagui is turning a new page.

Source: Economic Daily. Editor: Wu Hongli.