SEPTEMBER 13 — China’s Pinglu Canal should not be understood simply as another impressive piece of infrastructure.
For Asean, it represents something potentially much larger: the gradual geographical reorientation of southwestern China towards Southeast Asia.
The 134.2-kilometre canal in Guangxi connects China’s inland river system with Qinzhou and the Beibu Gulf, opening a substantially shorter maritime route for goods originating in western and southwestern China.
Its location is particularly significant.
The Beibu Gulf, known internationally as the Gulf of Tonkin, lies beside Vietnam.
Once vessels emerge from the canal, they are already facing maritime Southeast Asia.
That changes economic geography.
For decades, much of China’s industrial development was associated with its eastern seaboard: Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai.
The great ports of eastern China connected the country to Japan, South Korea, North America and the wider world.
The Pinglu Canal points in another direction: south.
China is increasingly developing its southwestern provinces and autonomous regions with Southeast Asia in mind.
The canal is designed to accommodate vessels of up to 5,000 tonnes and is expected to reduce the inland shipping distance from southwestern China to the sea by approximately 560 kilometres compared with routes that previously depended on access through Guangdong.
This is not a trivial logistical adjustment.
Transportation costs shape trade.
Trade shapes investment. Investment gradually reshapes strategic relationships.
Asean therefore needs to understand the Pinglu Canal as part of a much larger transformation.
It forms an important component of China’s New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, which links inland economic centres such as Chongqing and Chengdu through western and southern China towards the Beibu Gulf.
The canal consequently gives parts of inland China something they have historically lacked: more direct and economical access to Southeast Asian waters.
Vietnam will feel this transformation first because of geography.
But it would be a mistake for Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the rest of Asean to regard the canal merely as a China-Vietnam matter.
Once ships enter the Beibu Gulf, the maritime routes naturally extend towards the wider South China Sea and Southeast Asia.
Singapore and Malaysia sit further down these commercial arteries. Thailand is developing its own logistics ambitions.
Vietnam possesses a long coastline and increasingly important manufacturing centres. Indonesia remains the largest economy in Asean.
The canal could therefore reinforce the economic integration already taking place between China and Asean. That presents enormous opportunities.
Asean companies could gain better access to China’s enormous western hinterland.
Agricultural commodities, minerals, intermediate goods and manufactured products could move in both directions more efficiently.
Western Chinese provinces that previously appeared distant from Southeast Asia could effectively become part of Asean's immediate economic neighbourhood.
But infrastructure is never strategically neutral.
Ports, railways, highways, pipelines and canals do more than transport commodities. They reorganise economic space.
When trade routes change, centres of economic gravity can change with them.
Asean must consequently avoid two opposite mistakes.
The first would be to portray the Pinglu Canal automatically as a Chinese geopolitical threat.
Such thinking would be simplistic. Asean desperately needs infrastructure, connectivity, investment and more efficient supply chains.
China is Asean’s largest trading partner, while Asean has become China’s largest trading partner. Greater physical connectivity between the two can generate considerable prosperity.
The second mistake, however, would be equally serious: pretending that the canal has no strategic implications whatsoever.
It clearly does.
The Pinglu Canal gives China another means of orienting its enormous inland economy towards Southeast Asia.
Together with rail connections through Laos, expanding ports around the Beibu Gulf and extensive transportation networks across southern China, a new north-south economic geography is taking shape.
Asean should prepare accordingly.
The response should not be containment. It should be connectivity.
Asean needs better ports, stronger railway networks, more efficient customs procedures and deeper interoperability between national logistics systems.
The Asean Connectivity agenda must become physical rather than rhetorical.
Malaysia has particular reasons to pay attention.
Port Klang, Port of Tanjung Pelepas, Penang Port and the wider logistics infrastructure of the country should position themselves to capture increasing flows between western China and maritime Southeast Asia.
The same applies to Singapore, whose extraordinary success has always depended partly on anticipating changes in maritime geography before others do.
Vietnam faces an even more immediate strategic calculation.
A major Chinese commercial artery is emerging close to its northern maritime approaches.
Hanoi will naturally welcome the economic opportunities while simultaneously examining the longer-term consequences for trade patterns, ports and strategic geography.
This is precisely why Asean should discuss the Pinglu Canal collectively rather than leaving individual member states to react separately.
China thinks in corridors.
Asean must learn to think in networks.
A corridor concentrates movement between particular points. A network distributes opportunities across numerous economies.
Asean’s task is therefore to connect China’s new southern-facing infrastructure with an increasingly integrated Southeast Asian transportation system without becoming excessively dependent on any single external economy.
This is where Asean’s polytropous character becomes useful.
The region does not have to choose between China, Japan, South Korea, India, the European Union or the United States. It can deepen economic relationships with all of them while strengthening its own internal connectivity.
Indeed, the arrival of the Pinglu Canal should accelerate Asean’s determination to build stronger intra-Asean infrastructure.
Otherwise a peculiar situation could emerge: China may become increasingly efficient at connecting with Southeast Asia while Southeast Asian countries remain comparatively inefficient at connecting with one another.
That would weaken Asean’s centrality far more than any diplomatic disagreement.
Strategic geography is ultimately shaped by movement — of ships, goods, capital, technology and people.
The Pinglu Canal is creating a new direction of movement.
Southwestern China is moving closer to Southeast Asia economically even though the physical geography has not changed.
Asean should welcome the opportunities but understand the strategic consequences. China has built a canal towards the sea.
That sea leads directly towards Southeast Asia.
Asean must make sure that when the new economic currents begin flowing southward, the region possesses enough connectivity, resilience and strategic foresight to navigate them on its own terms.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies, and director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writers or publication and does not necessarily represent the views ofMalay Mail.
