en.Wedoany.com Reported - On May 27, the Guangxi Maritime Safety Administration and the South China Sea Navigation Support Center of the Ministry of Transport jointly released the "Three-Year Action Plan for Accelerating the Construction of a Modern Navigation Support System in Guangxi Waters (2026-2028)," proposing to jointly build the Pinglu Canal into China's first river-sea direct digital smart canal. Guangxi, as a region with comprehensive water elements including rivers, seas, and reservoir areas, will also be among the first in the country to promote the construction of a modern navigation support system across its entire territory.
The Pinglu Canal is a backbone project of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor and the first canal project built since the founding of the People's Republic of China that connects rivers to the sea. Public information shows that the Pinglu Canal has a total length of 134.2 kilometers. Upon completion, it will be navigable for 5,000-ton vessels and is scheduled to open for full navigation in September 2026. By then, the shipping distance for goods from the southwestern region to the sea will be shortened by approximately 560 kilometers, significantly enhancing the river-sea intermodal transport capacity of Guangxi and even the southwestern and central-southern regions facing the Beibu Gulf and the ASEAN market.
The focus of this three-year action plan is not just on adding navigation aids, communication, and supervision facilities for a single canal, but on establishing a modern navigation support system for the entire waters of Guangxi. Navigation support typically includes aids to navigation, waterway surveying and mapping, communication and navigation, environmental perception, water traffic organization, emergency response, and information services, which directly relate to the safe passage of ships, the efficiency of port-shipping coordination, and the stable operation of water transport corridors. Guangxi possesses multiple types of waters, including rivers, sea areas, and reservoir areas. After the Pinglu Canal opens for navigation, the coordination requirements among inland waterway shipping, coastal ports, and river-sea direct vessels will further increase.
The "smart" characteristics of the Pinglu Canal are already reflected in both its construction and future operation. The "Digital Twin Smart Canal" system deployed at the Pinglu Canal Construction Dispatch Command Center uses new-generation information technologies such as BeiDou, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to map project progress and construction dynamics in real-time, achieving synchronous construction of the digital twin and the physical project. Recent reports by Guangxi media also disclosed that the Pinglu Canal will rely on wireless networks, dedicated transmission networks, and perception networks, focusing on aspects such as vessel arrival time, lock chamber allocation, and water level regulation, to automatically generate optimal solutions through AI algorithms.
River-sea direct waterways place higher demands on intelligent capabilities. When 5,000-ton vessels enter the canal, factors such as lock scheduling, water level changes, navigation density, vessel queuing, extreme weather, and emergency incidents will all affect operational efficiency. Traditional manual scheduling modes are susceptible to information delays, local congestion, and insufficient cross-departmental coordination under high-frequency vessel traffic and complex working conditions. If a digital system can perceive risks in advance, dynamically arrange lock chambers, and optimize water level regulation and vessel sequencing, it will help improve navigation efficiency and reduce vessel waiting times and safety accident risks.
The Pinglu Canal has previously been included in a special pilot project for intelligent ship navigation and support under the national strategy to build China's strength in transportation. Information from the Ministry of Transport shows that the "Guangxi Pinglu Canal Intelligent Ship Navigation and Support Application" pilot project aims to build a "world-class inland intelligent shipping innovation benchmark." It plans to complete, through three years of focused effort, China's first inland intelligent shipping demonstration zone featuring "full-element intelligent interaction, full-chain efficient coordination, and full-voyage autonomous controllability." This pilot project is guided by the Maritime Safety Administration and the Water Transport Bureau of the Ministry of Transport, and led by the Department of Transport of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the Guangxi Maritime Safety Administration.
From the perspective of regional logistics patterns, the opening of the Pinglu Canal will more directly connect the main stream of the Xijiang River with the Beibu Gulf ports, providing a new sea access channel for Guangxi and the southwestern region. Water transport has advantages of large capacity, low cost, and low carbon emissions, but to truly form a high-efficiency corridor, coordinated operation of waterways, locks, ports, navigation aids, communications, supervision, ships, and logistics information systems is required. Guangxi's proposal to build a river-sea direct digital smart canal is essentially building a digital foundation in advance for vessel organization, port-shipping linkage, and corridor operation capacity after the canal opens for navigation.
Subsequent observation will focus on the specific project list of the three-year action plan, the construction progress of navigation support facilities, the milestone of the Pinglu Canal's full navigation opening in September, the actual operational effectiveness of the BeiDou and AI monitoring systems, and whether the models for lock chamber allocation, water level regulation, and risk prediction can be stably applied in high-intensity navigation scenarios. Guangxi, China's creation of the country's first river-sea direct digital smart canal indicates that large-scale water transport projects are moving from purely civil engineering corridor construction into a new phase jointly supported by digital twins, intelligent scheduling, and modern navigation support systems.
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