China News Service, Qinzhou, Guangxi, September 3 (Zhai Liqiang) As the international gateway port of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, Guangxi Beibu Gulf Port will usher in the major historical opportunity of the full opening of the Pinglu Canal. It is continuing to make up for the shortcomings of river-sea intermodal transport software and hardware, expand cross-border logistics cooperation, and strive to shape a new development pattern of river-sea railway multimodal transport.
On September 3, media representatives participating in the 2026 Overseas Media Watch Guangxi interview event came to the Beibu Gulf Port along the Pinglu Canal to experience up close the pulse of the construction of this international hub seaport connecting the river and the sea.
On September 3, foreign media visited the Pinglu Canal. Photo by Zhai Liqiang
Iterative upgrade of supporting capabilities for river-sea intermodal transport
Beibu Gulf Port currently has 93 productive berths, with an annual throughput capacity of 489 million tons. It implements a "one port and three domains" coordinated development pattern: Qinzhou Port Area focuses on building a container trunk port, Fangcheng Port Area builds a bulk cargo distribution hub, and Beihai Tieshan Port Area focuses on serving port-side enterprises.
At present, Beibu Gulf Port has opened a total of 103 domestic and foreign trade container routes. Among them, domestic trade routes lead to major domestic coastal ports and inland river ports in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. Foreign trade routes go directly to Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, India and Pakistan, the Middle East, South Africa, South America, Western America and other regions, and rely on hub ports such as Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Singapore to connect to global markets.
It is understood that in order to adapt to the needs of the Pinglu Canal river-sea intermodal transport business, the Beibu Gulf Port System has promoted seaside berth reconstruction and major project construction, and implemented adaptive transformation of 13 river-sea intermodal transport berths in batches. 11 of them have been completed, accepted and put into use, and all meet the berthing standards for thousand-ton inland river ships; the remaining two berths are expected to be completed and put into use by the end of this year. A number of heavyweight port projects are also accelerating their implementation. The construction of No. 4 and No. 5 berths in the Shawei operating area of Tieshandong Port Area in Beihai Port and the 300,000-ton wharf project in Fangcheng Port are about to begin.
In order to efficiently connect the Pinglu Canal and ensure that the port's loading and unloading capacity matches the future freight scale of the canal, Beibu Gulf Port optimizes the functions of the Jingu Port Area in the Qinzhou Port Area, promotes the construction of river-sea intermodal transport berths such as the Fourth Operation Area of the Yushu Port Area in the Fangcheng Port Area, and the Dalanping South Operation Area in the Qinzhou Port Area. It also integrates railway, highway, and water transport resources, improves multimodal transport service products, opens up the "door-to-door" full link for goods, and achieves "one network" full coverage of railway, highway, and water transport multimodal transport services.
The picture shows Beibu Gulf Port Qinzhou Automated Container Terminal. Photo by Zhai Liqiang
The canal empowers, reshapes the channel pattern and deepens ASEAN cooperation
Cargoes from China's southwest hinterland go out to sea through the Pinglu Canal, which shortens the voyage by about 560 kilometers compared with traditional routes. The opening of the Pinglu Canal will attract cargo sources from the Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Xijiang river basins to gather in the Beibu Gulf Port.
Chen Tao, director of the Container Marketing Center of the Production Business Department of Beibu Gulf Port Co., Ltd., said that after the Pinglu Canal is opened to navigation, it will open up a convenient and efficient new water transportation channel for southwest goods to the sea, which is of great strategic significance for improving the layout of Beibu Gulf Port and improving the radiation energy level of the port hub.
Under the framework of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the linkage between Beibu Gulf Port and Pinglu Canal will release huge trade value. Xie Jialiang, deputy general manager of the market operation department of Beigang Logistics and general manager of the project logistics center (and concurrently), introduced that the Pinglu Canal connects the China-Laos Railway and the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, which can help landlocked countries such as Laos break through the bottleneck of not having an outlet to the sea; facing the East such as Vietnam and Malaysia, Among the coastal countries of the alliance, the Beibu Gulf Port has opened 50 direct container shipping routes in the ASEAN direction. Goods such as Malaysian Musang King durian can be distributed directly to southwest China through the cold chain distribution of Qinzhou Port. Companies in overseas markets can also rely on the river-sea-rail multimodal transport to share channel dividends.
Xie Jialiang said that from the perspective of the global supply chain, the Pinglu Canal will give birth to a new water transport axis of "Southwestern hinterland-Pinglu Canal-Beibu Gulf Port-ASEAN", which will complement each other with the Western Land-Sea Corridor sea-rail intermodal trains, guide the reasonable diversion of cargo flow, and gradually optimize the logistics flow in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to reports, in the next 1-3 years, Beibu Gulf Port Group will continue to cultivate China-ASEAN two-way supply of goods, make good use of overseas distribution nodes in Malaysia and Vietnam, improve the "one order system" for multimodal transport, and create "end-to-end" special logistics solutions for cold chain, bulk, new energy and other cargo types.
Pictured is the Pinglu Canal. (Drone photo) Photo by Wang Yizhao
Large water transport model consolidates digital base for river-sea combined transport
While strengthening the hardware foundation, digitalization and intelligence have become an important driving force for the high-quality development of river-sea intermodal transportation in Beibu Gulf Port. The large-scale smart water transport model of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor is the first batch of "artificial intelligence +" open scenarios in Guangxi, focusing on the two major business pain points of ship lock dispatching and port berth planning.
Chen Fuqiang, deputy general manager of the Science and Technology Information Department of Beibu Gulf Port Group, said that this large model has now entered the demonstration application stage, building a smart water transportation knowledge graph covering more than 10 types of data sources and 35 million nodes, with a knowledge extraction accuracy of over 95%. A total of more than 100,000 high-quality question and answer samples have been accumulated for water transportation exclusive model training, with a water transportation scenario reasoning accuracy of 87% and a safety and compliance pass rate of over 98%.
Previously, this large model has been implemented in the Xijiang ship lock group and the Beibu Gulf port group; in the Xijiang Changzhou hub ship lock pilot, the preparation of the block plan was compressed from 20 minutes to less than 20 seconds, and the utilization rate of the lock chamber increased by 5% in the four-line ship lock row; the Qinzhou Port Terminal's 72-hour day and night ship berthing and unberthing plan took time to be compressed from 1.5 hours to 1 minute, and emergency dispatch achieved minute-level response.
Chen Fuqiang said that in the next step, Beibu Gulf Port Group will use the large-scale smart water transport model to empower a unified intelligent dispatching center to achieve efficient linkage of seaports, flat land canals and inland rivers, and to build technical support for integrated river and sea operations.
It is reported that as the entire Pinglu Canal is about to be opened to navigation, Beibu Gulf Port will accelerate the construction of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor (Guangxi) smart water transportation network, achieve multi-scenario and multi-business collaboration, facilitate efficient coordinated operation of rivers and seas, and inject momentum into the economic and trade exchanges between China and other RCEP member states. (over)
