China has opened up the Pinglu Canal in Guangxi, which is a shorter water route connecting the country’s southwest to the sea, and access to Southeast Asian markets.
The 134.2-kilometre canal links Nanning with the Beibu Gulf, an alternative to the historic routes through Guangdong. The cargo from the southwest region of China will no longer have to go through over 560km of inland waterway transportation.
The project cost 72.7 billion yuan ($10.75 billion) and took over four years to construct. It will be rated for up to 5,000 tonnes. The new route is expected to reduce overall logistics costs by 18% to 30%, and save over 5 billion yuan per annum in transportation costs, Chinese authorities said.
The canal is part of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, which connects inland China to the ASEAN countries and other markets overseas. It is also the first river-to-sea canal project to be planned and coordinated nationally in China since 1949.
The waterway is seen to be in great demand for transporting goods like coal, ore, grain, new-energy materials and automobile parts manufactured in southwestern China. These products will have a more direct access to international markets.
The major engineering work needed for construction was to deal with the 65-metre water level difference that the route spanned. Three sets of navigation hubs with twin ship locks were constructed for ships to traffic between the levels. The project features a fish pass and a wildlife crossing, with over 98% of the approximately 315 million cubic metres of material excavated being reused.
As the trade between China and ASEAN is booming, the canal is also opening. In 2025, bilateral trade for the first time exceeded the $1 trillion mark, and in the first seven months of 2026, the bilateral trade increased by 24.7% year-on-year to $744.41 billion.
The canal’s significance is not limited to its role of shortening distances, but could also help to reduce transport costs and uncertainty along supply chains between ASEAN and southwestern China, said a logistics expert at Thailand’s Naresuan University.
