On October 20-22, along the banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River, the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference returns once again. Nobel Prize and Turing Award winners will take the stage to discuss the future and trends of technology, and the internet-famous professor who "rescues" people from anxiety and involution—Macfarlane—will hold a live dialogue with Xiang Biao!
Limited spots available, first come first served. Let us come together for this sustainable appointment! [Click to register] (Source: Qianlong Net) On an autumn day at Nanning Port, masts stand in clusters and crane arms rise and fall. "During this year's National Day holiday, container throughput at Nanning Port grew substantially, the number of vessels arriving at the port continued to increase, and the variety of goods kept expanding," said Wang Fakun, Party branch secretary, director, and general manager of Nanning Port Development Investment Co., Ltd., with delight. What has made this inland river port bustling is a newly opened canal. Since the Pinglu Canal began navigation, most of the newly added cargo volume has arrived along the canal, and Nanning Port's cargo source structure has quietly been rewritten—shifting from being mainly local cargo sources to a new pattern of "southwest hinterland cargo sources + local cargo sources."
Backed by the southwest and adjacent to ASEAN, Guangxi naturally stands at the forefront of China's opening-up and cooperation. Relying on the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor and linking land and sea, Guangxi continues to open up the arteries of goods circulation. From January to August this year, Guangxi's imports and exports to countries jointly building the "Belt and Road" reached 467.74 billion yuan, up 9.7% year on year; imports and exports to ASEAN reached 284.69 billion yuan, up 3.5% year on year. Pinglu Canal Madao Hub. Photo by Tong Zheng, Economic Daily reporter. With the official opening of the Pinglu Canal, the potential of river-sea connectivity is being further unleashed. Wang Xianzhang, deputy general manager of Guangxi Pinglu Canal Construction Co., Ltd. under the Pinglu Canal Group, told reporters that at the beginning of the canal's navigation, only three or four locks of vessels passed through in a day. Now it has increased to seven or eight locks a day, with thirty or forty vessels passing through the canal, and both the number of vessels and the cargo volume are gradually rising.
In the handshake between river and sea, the "distance" between the southwest hinterland and the Beibu Gulf keeps shrinking. Inland river channels, Beibu Gulf seaports, and western railway freight trains form a combined transport force, pushing the southwest hinterland and the ASEAN market tightly together. With goods flowing smoothly, the development pattern of the southwest has since been reshaped. Busy Beihai Tieshan Port. Photo by Zang Xiao, Economic Daily reporter. How can the canal be used well to make the opening-up move more flexible? The current new scene inspires great confidence. On the shipyard of China State Shipbuilding Corporation Guangxi Shipbuilding Co., Ltd., ship sections are densely arranged, and container ships suited to the ASEAN market are rapidly taking shape; at the Liugang Fangchenggang base, ore shipped from distant oceans is unloaded from the wharf, short-hauled into blast furnaces, and refined into steel on site; in the port-side factory buildings of the Beihai Tieshan Port public wharf, precision components produced by Yongxing Electronics complete testing and packaging and are conveniently shipped out through the port channel; in the Beibu Gulf International Fresh Cold Chain Logistics Park, fresh fruits and aquatic products from ASEAN complete quarantine and sorting and are quickly distributed to the southwest market, while domestic fruits and vegetables also gather here and set off on their journey to export to ASEAN. Steel billets being forged at the Liugang Fangchenggang base. File photo. Location advantages are turning into tangible industrial clustering effects.
"Building factories near the port means every saving becomes competitiveness. With the opening of the Pinglu Canal, the vitality of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor is even greater," said Huang Lei, executive deputy general manager of Guangxi Beigang New Materials Co., Ltd. The 304 high-end marine stainless steel produced by this company has already been used in the tank bodies, cold boxes, and cabins of ships navigating the Pinglu Canal. What the canal brings is not only cost reduction and efficiency improvement in logistics, but also a strong attraction for industries along the route. "The significance of a corridor is not simply transit and transfer, but allowing industries to take root on the ground, create new value locally, promote the extension of industrial chains into the hinterland, and expand processing value-added and trade volume," said Chen Baoguo, assistant director of the Trade and Logistics Bureau of the China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park. Relying on the location advantages of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, a group of enterprises including Guangxi Jingui Pulp & Paper Co., Ltd. have successively settled in the park, processing locally and shipping out nearby. From "transit" to "taking root," from "corridor" to "place of origin," behind this is a leap in the quality of development.
The door of opening-up is not only opened in the industrial field, and exchange and cooperation do not stop at trade. In the Fangchenggang International Medical Open Pilot Zone, relying on the convenient policy of rapid cross-border customs clearance of biological samples, scientific research teams carry out joint research on new drug development and the exploration of traditional ASEAN medicine. "Open cooperation is the foundation, and more importantly, it drives mutual recognition and connectivity of rules, standards, and technologies," said Li Yongqiang, Party secretary and director of the Guangxi Medical Products Administration. The medical pilot zone has built a drug review and approval platform and, in coordination, established China's first cross-border regional medical trading platform—the China-ASEAN Regional Medical Trading (Centralized Procurement) Platform. A total of 400 pharmaceutical enterprises and 84 overseas pharmaceutical buyers have already joined, helping the products and technical standards of the medical pilot zone move toward the vast international market.
The exploration in the medical field is not an isolated case. Relying on the construction of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, the results of cross-border connectivity are increasingly evident. Based on the "two countries, twin parks" linkage mechanism, the China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park is exploring inspection mutual recognition and standard alignment in fields such as bird's nests and fire protection products, and has simultaneously launched the China-ASEAN (Qinzhou) Artificial Intelligence Innovation Cooperation Center to promote the implementation of "AI + cross-border industry" in the Qinzhou Port area. "Guangxi's three major advantages of being coastal, along the river, and along the border have gathered for the first time in the same low-cost water transport channel, forming a pattern of coordinated opening-up and development," said Geng Zequn, a researcher at the "Belt and Road" Economic and Trade Cooperation Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce. In the construction of the land-sea corridor, Guangxi is evolving from a "corridor" to a "hub." The tide is calm and the river broadens on both banks; the wind is fair and a single sail hangs high. Guangxi's opening-up and development chessboard is making moves between river and sea, growing ever more dynamic.
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