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Backed by the great Southwest, facing the Beibu Gulf, and connected to ASEAN by both land and sea. Such a location once made Guangxi be seen as a "dead end" of transportation. Today, cargo ships set sail from here, tokens depart from here, and industries flourish here. The land of Bagui is presenting four business cards to the world—location, canal, AI, and industry—all telling the same story: striving toward the sea for strength.

Location Card: From Former Borderland to Frontline Today

Location is an endowment, but cashing it in depends on openness. When the first China-ASEAN Expo was held in 2004, trade between China and ASEAN stood at US$105.88 billion; in 2025, that figure reached US$1.05 trillion, nearly 10 times that of that year. ASEAN has remained Guangxi's largest trading partner for 26 consecutive years. In Pingxiang, in the country's first standardized fruit laboratory at a border port, testing time for imported and exported fruit has been compressed by 40%, and the customs clearance cost per container has been reduced by nearly 2,000 yuan. Fresh fruit picked in orchards in Vietnam and Thailand enters through Guangxi ports and can be placed on domestic supermarket shelves in as little as 48 hours. From January to August this year, Guangxi ports imported about 30.45 billion yuan of ASEAN fruit, up 13.2%, accounting for more than one-third of the national total. Of every two imported durians in China, one enters through Guangxi. The radius of openness extends beyond ASEAN. From January to August, Guangxi's total imports and exports with ASEAN reached 284.69 billion yuan, accounting for more than half of its foreign trade; total imports and exports with Africa, the EU, and Latin America grew by 23.8%, 27.5%, and 33.2%, respectively. Ding Jinxue, director of the Comprehensive Research Office of the Comprehensive Transportation Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that Guangxi is China's only province connected to ASEAN by both land and sea and is the frontier and window for the country's opening-up and cooperation toward ASEAN, with its status and role in the overall national opening-up pattern becoming increasingly prominent. China-ASEAN Commodity Convergence Center. Photo by Zhu Huichun.

Canal Card: Pinglu Canal Connects Rivers and Seas

With a blast of the whistle, rivers and seas are linked. In September this year, the Pinglu Canal opened to navigation. This is the first canal project built since the founding of New China that connects rivers to the sea, directly linking the West River golden waterway with the Beibu Gulf international gateway port. Goods from the Southwest shipped to the sea through this route shorten the inland river voyage by more than 560 kilometers compared with detouring through Guangzhou, reduce comprehensive logistics costs by 18% to 30%, and can save more than 5 billion yuan in transport costs each year. The canal must be "built well," and even more so "operated well" and "made profitable." Guangxi takes the Beibu Gulf Port as its land-sea gateway, the Pinglu Canal Economic Belt as an important link, and the New Western Land-Sea Corridor as its strategic driver, promoting the clustering of more resources and industries in the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone and advancing the New Western Land-Sea Corridor from a "transport line" to an "economic network," better serving the construction of a new development pattern in the coordination of land and sea and internal and external connectivity. Pinglu Canal scenery. File photo.

AI Card: Taking a Different Path to Overtake on the Curve

In smart factories, intelligent robots are on duty; beside blast furnaces, large models assess smelting parameters in real time; on assembly lines, AI production scheduling systems show their prowess. In terms of computing power and algorithms, Guangxi does not lead, yet it has forged a differentiated path of "R&D in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou + integration in Guangxi + application in ASEAN." Its hub is the China-ASEAN National Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center, launched in September 2025. Here, Chen Xiujuan, enterprise management director of Jiejianrun Technology Group Co., Ltd., told reporters that the company is deeply engaged in smart agriculture, building cross-border agricultural intelligent decision-making platforms such as the Agricultural Digital Brain and "Tudi AI—Max," covering the entire chain before, during, and after production and adaptable to the differentiated climates, soils, and planting models of multiple ASEAN countries. "This integrated solution has served more than 2 million mu of farms, landed 30 agricultural projects in Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and other countries, and extended its business to Australia and Nigeria," Chen Xiujuan said. At present, more than 300 artificial intelligence enterprises are investing and operating in Guangxi, facilitating 43 cross-border cooperation projects with Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and other countries; in 2025, the output value of Guangxi's AI core industry in the industrial sector exceeded 89 billion yuan. The channels for AI going global are being densified. In June 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved the establishment of an international communications business gateway office in Nanning, the fourth nationwide after Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and the first additional one in 30 years; 12 cross-border international land communication optical cables and 3 international submarine cables have been completed. The systems for AI going global are keeping pace. Guangxi has issued the first negative list for data outbound transfer in the central and western regions and along the border, and the sixth nationwide, and has studied and formulated three special lists around corpus training, model development and delivery, and token going global. At the Nanning Runjian Co. Wuxiang Cloud Valley Intelligent Computing Center, reporters learned that it has upgraded from renting computing power by card-hour to a "Token Factory." The latency of data from Nanning to ASEAN is about 15 to 20 milliseconds, and to Singapore about 20 milliseconds. "Within 50 milliseconds humans basically do not perceive it; this is Guangxi's regional advantage." Li Linqiang, general manager of the Public Affairs Department of Runjian Co., introduced.

Industry Card: Turning Corridor Advantages into Winning Momentum

Turning corridor advantages into industrial advantages is the focus of Guangxi's drive toward the sea for strength. Look at Liuzhou: in the first half of this year, exports reached 23.25 billion yuan, up 23.3%; exports to ASEAN of lithium batteries and electric vehicles surged by 819% and 314.7%, respectively. Even a bowl of luosifen has crossed the oceans, with exports of 45.745 million yuan in the first half of the year, up 19.6%. At Liuzhou Railway Port, export assembly, port functions, and customs clearance services have been moved forward together to the "workshop door" of manufacturing enterprises. Liuzhou Railway Port serves both as the outlet to the sea for "Made in Liuzhou" and as a transfer station for "global goods" entering the southwestern hinterland. Look at the Beibu Gulf: industries such as high-end metal new materials, green chemical new materials, and electronic information are accelerating their clustering. Guangxi's gross ocean product increased from 137.7 billion yuan in 2017 to 268.78 billion yuan in 2025, and its share of regional GDP rose from 7.7% to 9%. The picture shows a corner of the smart factory of Guangxi Liugong Machinery Co., Ltd. Photo by Wei Jiayue.

Today's Guangxi is not only the country's "sugar jar" and "fruit plate," but has also cultivated 10 trillion-yuan-level industries including nonferrous metals, machinery, and electronic information. From January to August this year, exports of automobiles and parts grew by 32%, imports of bulk commodities such as copper ore and aluminum ore all grew by more than 40%, and the scale of the copper concentrate bonded blending pilot remained first in the country; in the first half of the year, gross ocean product reached 137.7 billion yuan, up 6.8% year on year. These four business cards of Guangxi are closely linked: location attracts corridors, corridors support industry, AI gives industry wings, and industry in turn gives location more weight. Prospering toward the sea and striving toward the sea for strength, the story of openness in the land of Bagui is turning a new page.