discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
China just opened a brand new canal, 134 kilometers long, costing around 70 billion yuan or 10 billion US dollars.
It's the first major canal built in China since 1949. What could this Pinglu
Canal actually mean for the way we move goods, run businesses and connect with Southeast Asia?
And in an age of high-speed railways and vast road networks, why build a canal at all?
Coming to you from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Fei Fei, and for today's discussion, I'm joined by Steve Heatherly and Yixuan.
First...
Picture the map of southern China for a second.
Hong Kong and Guangzhou sit on the east coast.
Vietnam sits to the southwest.
And in between those two is Guangxi, a Chinese region about the size of the UK, wedged between Vietnam and the sea.
And its biggest river drained the wrong way, east towards Hong Kong instead of going south to its own coastline.
And China tried to fix that by digging a new river.
On September 16, it opened a brand new 134-kilometer canal through Guangxi.
It is the first sea-leaking canal China has planned
and built at a national level since the country was founded in 1949. It sounds like a niche-shipping story.
I mean, it's not a really long canal anyway.
But the numbers behind it are enormous.