China News Service, Baise, Guangxi, October 3. Title: Baise, Guangxi: Red landmarks usher in new opportunities to "connect the river to the sea"
China News Service reporter Han Shuainan
During the National Day holiday, the former site of the Seventh Red Army Military Headquarters and the Guangdong Guild Hall in Baise, Guangxi attracted many tourists. A huge plaque hanging high in the front hall - "East to West" is particularly eye-catching. "These four words mean that the business of Guangdong merchant gangs gradually extends from the eastern coast to the west and covers Baise and other places." Gan Xiaoyun, the tour guide of the museum, introduced to tourists.
Baise City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is located in the upper reaches of the Youjiang River, connecting Yunnan and Guizhou to the northwest and Guangdong to the southeast. It was an important water transportation artery and trade distribution center for Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, merchants from eastern Guangdong opened a market here and established the Guangdong Guild Hall. Yunnan copper trade was its core business. In December 1929, the Baise Uprising broke out. The Guangdong Guild Hall became the military headquarters and uprising headquarters of the Seventh Red Army, and the Trade Guild Hall was transformed into a Red Revolution landmark and strategic command center.
"Dian and Guangxi are connected by mountains and rivers. Red landmarks such as the former site of the Seventh Red Army Headquarters in Baise and the Baise Uprising Memorial Hall have attracted many Yunnanese people and research groups all year round to trace their red roots." Gan Xiaoyun said.
At the Baise Uprising Memorial Hall, Chen Jinghe, a tourist from Wenshan, Yunnan, was taking his children to receive red education during the holidays. "It only took me more than three hours to drive from Wenshan to Baise. I felt a power that spans time and space from these revolutionary cultural relics and historical images."
This power is now being transformed into a real scene of cross-regional linkage between Yunnan and Guangxi. In the lower reaches of the Youjiang River, dozens of kilometers away from the Guangdong Guild Hall, a huge ship lift tower stands majestically, and the construction of the Baise Water Conservancy Project navigation facilities is in full swing. The project line has a total length of 4,384 meters and is the world's first thousand-ton shipping hub that adopts the combined solution of "upstream water-saving lock + long-distance intermediate channel + downstream vertical ship lift".
Yu Xia, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of Baise Hub Navigation Investment Co., Ltd., said that the project is expected to be ready for trial navigation in the first half of 2027. After completion, it will form a direct channel "Youjiang-Pinglu Canal-Beibu Gulf Port", building the shortest and lowest-cost water transportation channel in Yunnan's southbound direction.
The opening of this new water transportation channel will activate the core location value of Baise connecting Yunnan and Guizhou and Xianghai Tuqiang. At the economic level, Yunnan's minerals and characteristic agricultural and forestry products no longer need to go around the land route. They can go downstream through the Youjiang Waterway and directly to the Beibu Gulf through Baise to go out to sea. This will significantly reduce logistics costs in the southwest hinterland and promote industrial complementarity and resource exchange between Yunnan and Guangxi.
At the cultural tourism level, the connection of water transportation channels has established a new carrier for the co-construction and sharing of red cultural tourism in Yunnan and Guangxi. Relying on the same red history and the geographical advantages of connected mountains and rivers, the two places can open up cross-regional red study routes, achieve joint dissemination of red culture, and two-way empowerment of cultural tourism formats.
From the ancient commercial port in the Qing Dynasty that hosted the commerce and trade between Yunnan and Guangxi, to the red holy land that ignited the revolutionary spark in the southwest, to now the water transport hub that connects Yunnan and Guizhou, and connects rivers and seas, Baise's century-old transformation has always been closely linked to the symbiotic development of the southwest region. From "spreading from the east to the west" to "connecting the river to the sea", the Youjiang waterway in front of the former site of the Seventh Red Army's military headquarters has witnessed the trade between Yunnan and Guangxi and the red past, and is also being brought into a new waterway by the Pinglu Canal.
