Where mountains once kept China's interior provinces from the sea, a 134-kilometer channel now opens a passage — and with it, a recalibration of how goods, ambitions, and vulnerabilities are distributed across Southeast Asia. China's Pinglu Canal, inaugurated in Guangxi in September 2026, is the country's first modern river-to-sea waterway, binding landlocked Yunnan, Guizhou, and Chongqing to the Beibu Gulf and, beyond it, to ASEAN markets growing at a pace that rewards whoever arrives fastest. It is an act of infrastructure as geopolitics — a $10.8 billion argument that geography is not desti
China Opens Pinglu Canal to Reshape Southwest Trade Routes to Southeast Asia
Over 11,228 people across 2,764 households were relocated from four counties in Guangxi, with homes demolished and residents resettled into new housing models designed to preserve local customs.