China has announced that a canal connecting a river system in the Hengzhou region of south-central China to Qinzhou port near the Vietnam border in the South, is now being filled with water and will be open for ships in September. The Pinglu Canal will greatly improve the transport of goods from the industrial centers to the countries of Southeast Asia (ASEAN), one of China’s leading trade partners. This is another step in the China-ASEAN relationship, which Prof. Zhang Weiwei described as a model for global cooperation in his speech to the Schiller Institute conference in Berlin on May 30, contrasting it to the nearly constant warfare and conflict in Europe.
As usual in China, the project set new records both for China and for the world. The 135 km. route has a 65-meter elevation difference, requiring three locks, with chambers large enough to accommodate multiple large vessels of the 5,000-ton class. Two of the locks set a world benchmark for the fastest valve operation in water-saving locks. “Each working valve in the water conveyance galleries weighs 70 tons, yet can open in just one minute and close in 30 seconds,” Global Times reports.
The Pinglu Canal is the “largest earth and rockwork project in the country’s transportation history, requiring the excavation of approximately 315 million cubic meters of material—roughly three times the volume of the Three Gorges Project,” Global Times reports.
