‘Time is ripe’: why China is eyeing another vast canal link to Southeast Asia
China has almost completed the US$10 billion Pinglu Canal connecting its heartlands to Southeast Asia. Now, it is mulling an even larger waterway
The Xianggui Canal would be a 300km (186 mile) waterway that effectively acts as an extension of the new Pinglu Canal, giving cities right at the heart of the Chinese interior direct access to the Gulf of Tonkin, known in China as the Beibu Gulf.
If completed, the Xianggui Canal would enable China to create a vast network of waterways – known as the “Han-Xiang-Gui corridor” – stretching 3,200km from north to south across four provinces: namely, Shaanxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guangxi.
The fate of the project remains uncertain, as constructing the Xianggui Canal would be staggeringly expensive. At an estimated 150 billion yuan (US$21.6 billion), it would be more than twice as expensive as the Pinglu Canal.
But the imminent opening of the new waterway in Guangxi has increased its chances of moving forward, as the “time is ripe” for such a project, said Lu Yi, a professor at the School of Transportation at Changsha University of Science and Technology.