#Headline Creation Challenge#Before reading this article, could you please click on the red oneFollowThe button not only facilitates your discussion and sharing, but also brings you a different sense of participation. Thank you for your support!At the end of 2022, construction of the Pinglu Canal in Guangxi officially began

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Before reading this article, could you please click on the red oneFollowThe button not only facilitates your discussion and sharing, but also brings you a different sense of participation. Thank you for your support!

At the end of 2022, construction of the Pinglu Canal in Guangxi officially began. The cost of this canal is as high as 72.73 billion yuan, with a total length of 134.2 kilometers and a cost of 533800 yuan per meter.

The amount of earthwork used in the project is an astonishing 340 million cubic meters, more than three times that of the Three Gorges Project.

Is it reasonable to discuss such a high cost? Can the canal be restored to its original value after completion?

The benefits of water transportation

As early as over a hundred years ago, Mr. Sun Yat sen proposed the idea of building a canal in Guangxi with great strategic vision in his "National Strategy",The Pingtang River and Luwu River in Guangxi will soon be connected.

Most people who have studied geography know that water transportation is the cheapest among various modes of transportation.Someone once calculated that on the Yangtze River waterway, the most frequently traveled cargo ships were from Chongqing to Shanghai. By water, it only costs 9 cents per ton of goods per kilometer.

Compared with other modes of transportation, the advantages are very obvious. Among them, railway transportation costs 0.16 yuan per ton of goods per kilometer, road transportation costs 0.69 yuan per ton of goods per kilometer, and air transportation is the most expensive, with 1.8 yuan per ton of goods per kilometer. In this comparison, the cost of water transportation is almost negligible.

Water transportation not only has a price advantage, but also surpasses the others in terms of transportation volume.

In 2022, the national freight transportation turnover was 22612.2 billion tons per kilometer, with waterway transportation ranking first, with an astonishing 1210031 billion tons per kilometer. However, the second place highway transportation was only half of waterway transportation, with 6895.8 billion tons per kilometer, and railway transportation was only 3590.6 billion tons per kilometer.

It can be seen that water transportation, an ancient traditional transportation method, is still the preferred method for transporting large volume goods due to its advantages such as large volume, low cost, and low energy consumption.

At the same time, in the traditional perception of Chinese people, it is generally believed that when encountering water, wealth is generated, and water is wealth.

This makes sense,From a national perspective, as long as a region with developed water transportation is a gathering place for cities.

The Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, as two major wealth centers in China, are two good examples.

However, Guangxi is located in the the Pearl River basin, and its water resources are also very developed. Why has it not become a commodity distribution center like the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta?

Why invest billions to build the Pinglu Canal with such abundant water resources?

Why Build the Pinglu Canal

Guangxi is located in the middle and upper reaches of the the Pearl River basin. Although the water system in Guangxi extends in all directions and has an outlet to the sea in the south, there is a strange phenomenon in the transportation of goods in Guangxi.

Merchants would rather send their goods to the Pearl River Delta to go to sea, rather than go to the south of Guangxi to go to sea in the Gulf of Tonkin.

This strange phenomenon is precisely caused by the awkward geographical location of Guangxi.

Many important rivers in Guangxi flow from west to east, flowing straight down to Guangdong.

In this situation, if Guangxi's goods want to reduce transportation costs and use water transportation for shipping, they can only go downstream to the Pearl River Delta for packing.

If you want to go to the Gulf of Tonkin port in Guangxi to go to sea, you also need to transfer goods by land and water. Goods must be transported by rail or road to reach the Gulf of Tonkin port.

In this way, transportation is not only troublesome, but also increases costs for no reason.

At the same time, the Pearl River Delta enjoys convenient transportation by water and land, and bulk commodities are collected and distributed here. Therefore, most Guangxi merchants arrive at ports in Guangdong to unload their goods.

On the return journey, they will also load goods from Guangdong and bring them back to Guangxi for sale. Once in a while, there will be no delay, and both trips will earn some money.

The Gulf of Tonkin port in Guangxi is different, because it can only transport goods to the mainland by land transportation. Many businessmen will not stop at Gulf of Tonkin for unloading due to cost considerations, but go to Gulf of Tonkin port for export.

When it comes to the return journey, we naturally have to return empty, which inexplicably increases the cost.

In this comparison, it is better to go straight downstream and sail out to Guangdong. Although this may take some time, it can greatly save transportation costs.

It is the awkward river direction in Guangxi that keeps Guangxi's wealth flowing to Guangdong. Because of this, although Guangxi has excellent ports and abundant resources within the province, it is one of the worst coastal provinces in China. The fundamental reason is that although Guangxi appears to have a sea, it actually has no sea. The location advantage of Gulf of Tonkin near the sea has not been brought into play at all.

This is also the purpose for the country to promote the Pinglu Canal. This canal will connect the rivers flowing from east to west in Guangxi to the north and south. And through a straight canal directly to the Gulf of Tonkin port. After the completion of the Pinglu Canal, the goods in Guangxi will no longer go to Guangdong for shipping. Instead, they can go directly to the Gulf of Tonkin Port through the canal.

According to the plan of Pinglu Canal and peer standards, we can foresee that in the future, the Gulf of Tonkin will be a benchmark for the existence of the Pearl River Delta. According to the construction plan, the Pinglu Canal is planned to use 340 million cubic meters of earthwork. After completion, it will be the first Grand Canal since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and the navigation standards will be based on the construction of 5000 ton cargo ships. 5000 tons is equivalent to the amount of cargo loaded on 88 railway cars.

You should know that the navigation standard for the highly economically dynamic Beijing Hangzhou Grand Canal is only 1500 tons. According to the navigation level of Pinglu Canal, in the future, the goods of all provinces in southwest China will be imported and exported through the Gulf of Tonkin through cost comparison. From this, it can be imagined that after its completion, the Pinglu Canal can be said to be a well-deserved century canal and century project.

According to experts, in the past, if Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan and Guizhou, the four southwest provinces, want to ship goods to the sea, the nearest place is Leased Territory of Guangzhouwan, Zhanjiang, which must pass through the the Pearl River shipping system.

Once the Pinglu Canal is completed, they might as well go to Guangdong to go to sea. They can choose the nearest Gulf of Tonkin of Guangxi to go to sea, which will shorten the journey of 560 kilometers. Compared to Guangdong, Guangxi has more geographical advantages.

Guangxi is closer to ASEAN countries. Most of the goods exported from southwestern provinces to ASEAN countries. If the goods from the four southwestern provinces in the future no longer go to Guangdong but instead choose Guangxi, shipping alone can save 5.2 billion RMB annually.

That is to say, from the perspective of saving shipping costs alone, the investment of over 70 billion yuan in the Pinglu Canal can be recovered in just 14 years.

According to the prediction of tight economic experts, in the future, once the Pinglu Canal activates the economy of the Gulf of Tonkin, when Guangxi and ASEAN countries achieve economic connectivity, the Gulf of Tonkin will not only become the sea center of southwest provinces, because of its superior geographical location close to ASEAN, it is also very likely to become the emergency center of southwest provinces, and more likely to become the economic center of China ASEAN exchanges.

You should know that last year alone, the trade between ASEAN countries and China exceeded 6.5 trillion yuan.With the increasingly close relationship between China and ASEAN countries, this trade volume will only increase without decrease. The Pinglu Canal will be the golden key to leveraging this economic cake.

Unexpectedly, there are so many benefits to the Pinglu Canal, and Mr. Sun Yat sen proposed this plan more than a hundred years ago. As a direct beneficiary province, why did Guangxi not advance this project earlier and wait until 2022 to officially start construction.

Reasons for spending over 70 billion yuan

First of all, as a Socialist state, the construction of each huge project is related to the lifeline of the national economic operation, which can be said to affect the whole body.

Secondly, from the perspective of investment in the canal, there must be a reason why the cost of the canal is so high. The canal and difficulty have increased the funding for construction.

Guangxi has a complex terrain and ever-changing geological conditions. To build a huge waterway that can handle the transportation of goods in southwestern provinces in the future, it is not as simple as digging a few deep trenches.

To ensure that 5000 ton cargo ships can pass from the upstream of the Pearl River basin to Gulf of Tonkin, we must solve the error problem caused by terrain deviation.

The terrain drop from the upper reaches of the the Pearl River basin to the Gulf of Tonkin port is as much as 65 meters. If it is not handled properly, it will bring many unstable factors to the passage of cargo ships in the future.

For this reason, after scientific and close argumentation and solicitation of opinions, the Pinglu Canal adopts a stepped method of three-level shipping hub conversion to solve the problem of terrain drop.

Among the three shipping hubs, the Ma Dao hub is also the top priority of this hub project. After completion, the main area of the Ma Dao hub will reach 185000 square meters, making it the world's largest inland waterway lock.

In addition to topographic concerns, with the increasing awareness of environmental protection, such a large project as the Pinglu Canal is bound to destroy the local ecological diversity in the process of construction. The Bagui region where the Pinglu Canal is located is one of the regions with the richest biodiversity in Guangxi and even in China. It is the so-called "green water and green mountains", that is, Jinshan and Yinshan.

How to minimize environmental damage during the construction process? How to better protect ecology and achieve a win-win situation for economic and ecological development? These issues at the time were a headache for the expert group on canal construction.

Finally, the expert group decided to simultaneously build an ecological corridor during the construction process of the Pinglu Canal, and set up fish breeding stations, fish parade channels, land biological passage corridors, and so on. At the same time, biodiversity detection stations are also being built at various hubs to assess local biodiversity in real-time.

In fact, the reason why the Pinglu Canal was delayed for a hundred years before it finally landed was due to economic reasons and technical reasons. Now China is rich and powerful enough to bear these two heavy burdens. In terms of economy, China has become the second Economic power in the world.

What significant impact do you think the completion of the Pinglu Canal will have on this? You can leave your exciting ideas in the comments section!

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