China News Service, Nanning, September 16th. Title: The Pinglu Canal is open to navigation, fulfilling a century-old dream of the country and the country.
China News Service reporter Yang Chen
On September 16, the Pinglu Canal, the backbone project of the New Land-Sea Corridor in Western China, was completed and opened to navigation. More than a hundred years ago, Dr. Sun Yat-sen drew up a blueprint for connecting the Xijiang River to the Beibu Gulf to the sea in his "National Founding Strategy", hoping to solve the dilemma of accessing the sea from the southwest inland. A hundred years later, this long-cherished wish of our country has finally come true.
On September 13, 2026, in order to celebrate the completion and opening of the Pinglu Canal to navigation, the completion ceremony of the Pinglu Canal's magnificent brocade was held in Nanning, Guangxi. Published by China News Service and photographed by Chen Guanyan
Controlling water and opening up rivers is the gene of Chinese civilization that has been engraved for thousands of years. In ancient times, the Ling Canal connected Xiangli and Lingnan; the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal connected the north and the south and revitalized the national trade pattern. Canals of all ages have carried the Eastern wisdom of connecting the inside and outside and benefiting the world. Today, there is the Pinglu Canal to continue the cultural context and break through the land and sea. From the ancient inland rivers that revitalized the country to the contemporary opening up of the sea, the Chinese people's "canal complex" that has lasted for thousands of years has always remained unchanged. The original concept of symbiosis, openness and win-win.
Based on China’s overall domestic development situation, the Pinglu Canal is a key step in reconstructing the opening-up pattern of the inland. The canal opens up water transport barriers between the Xijiang River and the Beibu Gulf, shortening the sea voyage from China's southwest hinterland by more than 560 kilometers and significantly reducing logistics costs. It not only makes up for the shortcomings in the national water transport trunk line layout, but also uses river-sea-rail multimodal transport to activate the core vein of the new western land-sea corridor, transforming the southwestern inland from the tail end of development to the frontier of openness, smoothing the domestic circulation and empowering the construction of a unified national market.
On September 22, 2026, visitors took pictures at the Pinglu Canal Horse Road Junction. Published by China News Service and photographed by Chen Guanyan
Focusing on China-ASEAN regional cooperation, the Pinglu Canal is a new link of two-way empowerment and mutual benefit, reshaping the regional economic, trade and logistics pattern. Relying on its channel advantages and its own resource endowment, the landlocked country Laos hopes to "use the road to go to the sea" and enter the international market through the China-Laos Railway and bypass the Pinglu Canal to stimulate the export of domestic agricultural products and minerals; Myanmar hopes to take advantage of the opening of the Pinglu Canal to increase the capacity of the sea route from Qinzhou in Guangxi to Yangon, Myanmar; Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. hope to rely on the incremental cargo flow to deepen the development of shipping finance, smart logistics, and port-based industries, and tap into a new blue ocean of cooperation.
Opportunities and changes accompany each other, and challenges are also opportunities for upgrades. Facing the reconstruction of the port structure, while carefully assessing the pressure of cargo flow diversion, Vietnam has proactively connected with China's standard gauge railway interconnection construction in order to seize collaborative development opportunities in the changing situation. The shortcomings of cross-border "soft connectivity" will also force the region to break down barriers and dislocate division of labor, promote China-ASEAN economic and trade cooperation, and move from logistics interoperability to all-round and in-depth integration of industries and systems.
Looking at the global open landscape, the overflow value of the Pinglu Canal continues to be released. For Russia and other countries outside the region, the new channel enriches the cross-border logistics matrix, hedges the geopolitical risks of traditional routes, and builds a stable new channel connecting the ASEAN market. For countries in the Global South, China uses technology to break geographical constraints, coordinates construction with ecological concepts, and revitalizes regional advantages with long-term planning, providing an Eastern solution that can be used as a reference for cross-border infrastructure cooperation and land-sea connectivity.
On August 15, 2026, in Lingshan County, Qinzhou, Guangxi, the exclusive passage bridge for wildlife on the Pinglu Canal. Photo by Huang Yun issued by China News Service
One river connects the mountains and the sea, and one canal connects the east and west. As the first canal connecting the river and the sea that has been planned and constructed at the national level since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Pinglu Canal is more than just a water transportation channel. It connects the inland and the ocean, and integrates China and the world. It not only demonstrates China's proposition of win-win cooperation, but also injects more positive energy into a world intertwined with chaos.
