The Pinglu Canal officially opened to navigation on September 16, ending Guangxi's long-standing predicament of being a coastal region without a navigable river route to the sea.

Twenty-six days later, reporters joined the "Vitality China Research Tour" media delegation in Guangxi. At an October 12 briefing, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Transport Department presented three key figures: goods from the southwestern region exported via this route save more than 560 kilometers of inland waterway distance compared with traditional paths, comprehensive logistics costs drop by 18% to 30%, and more than 5 billion yuan in social transportation expenses can be saved annually.

"With the Pinglu Canal now officially open to navigation, Guangxi can be said to be facing the best development opportunity in its history," said Lin Zenan, deputy director of the autonomous region's Development and Reform Commission, at the briefing.

For Guangxi, this canal — the first river-to-sea waterway coordinated at the national level since the founding of the People's Republic of China — has changed more than just shipping distances. It has turned the direction of southwestern exports from a "single choice" into a "dual choice," while also posing a question: once cargo flows are drawn here, can industry follow?

Changing the Channel's Direction: Exports No Longer Detour Through the Pearl River Delta

Guangxi's predicament in reaching the sea has been a matter of direction. The Xijiang Golden Waterway runs across the entire region but flows eastward through Guangdong to the sea, forcing southwestern goods to long rely on the Pearl River Delta for export. Beibu Gulf Port has deep-water berths but has never been connected to Guangxi's inland river network. The three advantages of being coastal, riverine, and bordering — each guarded its own corner for decades.

"The Pinglu Canal has broken Guangxi's predicament of being coastal yet lacking a navigable river route to the sea," said Huang Yongzhong, deputy director of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Transport Department, at the briefing. After four years of construction, the canal has opened a direct connection between the Xijiang Golden Waterway and the Beibu Gulf International Gateway Port, linking river and sea.

What it changes first is a matter of directional accounting: for the first time, goods from Guangxi and the southwest exporting to the sea no longer need to detour through the Pearl River Delta.

Supporting infrastructure is also falling into place. According to reports, by the end of 2025, the region had cumulatively built 65 major corridors connecting to other provinces, the sea, and border areas; Beibu Gulf Port had cumulatively built 323 productive berths, including 39 berths of 100,000 deadweight tonnage or above.

Ding Jinxue of the National Development and Reform Commission's Comprehensive Transport Research Institute offered another set of figures: in 2025, Beibu Gulf Port's container throughput exceeded 10 million TEUs, with both port cargo and container throughput ranking firmly among the top ten coastal ports nationwide. Container routes now reach more than 200 ports in over 100 countries and regions worldwide.

At the multimodal transport level, the Western Land-Sea New Corridor's rail-sea intermodal trains exceeded 10,000 trips annually, and China-Vietnam cross-border trains ran about 3,000 trips per year. "A virtuous development cycle of corridors driving logistics, logistics driving trade, and trade driving industry has taken initial shape," Ding Jinxue described the transmission chain of corridor economics.

Reporters noted that years of corridor construction have already pushed Guangxi's existing logistics costs to a relatively low level. In 2025, the ratio of Guangxi's total social logistics costs to regional GDP fell to 13.6%, below the national average. With the Pinglu Canal completed, an additional 5 billion yuan in social transportation expenses can be saved each year.

Cargo Flows Converging: Transit Goods Landing and Gathering Here

Whether the change in direction can translate into a change in value depends on where cargo flows gather and for whom they are used. Nanning International Railway Port is a sample for observing this gathering.

According to reports, the railway port covers 8,140 mu with a planned investment of about 10 billion yuan. Since regular China-Vietnam trains began operating in November 2017, cargo volume has climbed year by year. As of October 8 this year, the port area had cumulatively dispatched 7.8 million tons of cargo and received 2.98 million tons, becoming the largest distribution center for railway exports to Vietnam nationwide.

What makes flows willing to linger here is that institutions have lowered the cost of lingering. Li Liang, deputy director of Nanning Post Office Customs, told reporters that customs has implemented a rail-sea intermodal supervision model in the port area, where goods are "declared once, kept in one container throughout," with no repeated inspections midway, cutting enterprise logistics costs by more than 20%. Combined with technology-supported seamless customs clearance using secure smart locks and satellite positioning, customs clearance time for transit goods has been reduced by more than 60%.

Across the street from the railway port, Phase II of the Nanning Comprehensive Bonded Zone was closed and put into operation on September 15 last year, joining the railway port and Wuxu International Airport to form a "two ports, one zone" layout. According to the bonded zone, since the "zone-port linkage" business began last December, enterprises have brought goods from factories in Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang to the zone for consolidation, then shipped them via China-Vietnam trains to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia, with import-export value of about 400 million yuan.

Data provided by the Nanning Comprehensive Bonded Zone shows that in the first eight months of this year, the zone's foreign trade imports and exports reached 9.979 billion yuan, up 128.9% year on year. The fastest-growing segment was bonded logistics, with imports and exports of 5.549 billion yuan, more than tripling year on year.

Border areas are also retaining flows. Data from recent years shows that Guangxi's border resident mutual trade accounts for about 60% of the national total, and on-site processing accounts for about 90%, with corridor flows directly converting into processing value-added at ports.

The consumption end has likewise connected the chain. According to materials provided by the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Department of Commerce, from January to August this year, Guangxi ports imported about 30.45 billion yuan 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, reaching domestic supermarkets in as little as 48 hours.

A Brand-New Test: Can Industry Catch What Arrives?

The flows that have gathered ultimately must answer a question: can Guangxi's position in the regional division of labor shift from a freight "corridor" to a link in the industrial chain?

According to Wang Xinhong, full-time deputy director of the Office of the China (Guangxi) Pilot Free Trade Zone, from January to August, Guangxi's trade in intermediate goods reached 410.09 billion yuan, up 18.5%. The integrated "border resident mutual trade plus on-site processing" model pioneered by Guangxi drove 14.58 billion yuan of on-site processing of mutual trade imported goods in 2025, up 34.8%.

Intermediate goods are the midstream products of cross-border industrial chains, while on-site processing keeps transit commodities at ports to complete value-added processing. Notably, exploration extends beyond Guangxi's borders. Wang Xinhong said Guangxi is exploring two types of cross-border industrial collaboration models: one in which the eastern region focuses on research and development, Guangxi handles intermediate goods production, and ASEAN completes finished product manufacturing, ultimately serving global markets; the other in which ASEAN supplies raw materials, Guangxi processes and manufactures, and products are then sold to global markets.

From January to August this year, Guangxi's imports and exports with ASEAN reached 284.69 billion yuan, ranking among the top in western provinces and regions. Beyond goods flows, technology and solutions are also heading toward ASEAN.

At the China-ASEAN Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center in Nanning, Kuang Hai, deputy party secretary and discipline inspection committee secretary of the Affiliated Stomatological Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, told reporters that an AI dental implant robot independently developed by Academician Zhao Yimin's team at Air Force Medical University and produced by Beijing Yake Smart Technology Co., Ltd. has provided diagnosis and treatment to more than 50 ASEAN patients at the hospital and has been installed and applied at multiple medical institutions in Vietnam and Singapore.

"This is the first time that Guangxi's three advantages of being coastal, riverine, and bordering have formed synergy within the same low-cost water transport corridor," said Geng Zequn, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation's Belt and Road Economic and Trade Cooperation Research Institute under the Ministry of Commerce. After the Pinglu Canal opened to navigation, the pattern of opening-up and development is being profoundly reshaped.

According to deployments at the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region level, the Pinglu Canal must next shift from being "built well" to being "operated well" and "yielding good returns," and the Pinglu Canal Economic Belt is already on the agenda.

At Nanning International Railway Port, the port area has set a three-part goal: "ASEAN fruit gathers in Guangxi, quality goods from across the country sell to ASEAN, and two-way circulation drives upgrading." The canal has already changed direction and drawn flows to the doorstep. What comes next depends on whether industry can catch them.