Pinglu Canal

Air travel capacity between the nations is surging, with eight-point-six million passenger seats available this year.

Additionally, China's new one hundred and thirty-four point two kilometers Pinglu Canal has opened, creating a new freight route from Nanning to Can Tho in Vietnam.

Shifting focus to Hong Kong, a pilot scheme to import foreign domestic carers for the elderly, set for the second half of next year, has sparked concerns.

Secretary for Labor and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han stated carers must complete a one hundred and fifty-hour course on specialized elderly care and general domestic skills, earning ten to twenty percent more than general domestic helpers, whose minimum wage rose to five thousand two hundred and twenty Hong Kong dollars this weekend.

The Nigerian government has confirmed there were no survivors and expressed condolences to the victims' families.

China's Pinglu Canal is expecting more than seventy-eight hundred tourists during its first National Day holiday.

The waterway that opened last month will operate fifty-two tour boat trips during the seven-day period.

The round trip takes roughly two hours, with boarding in just ten minutes.

So the rescue operations become, uh, one of the most important applications for these integrated air, sea, ground systems.

Last week, the, the Pinglu Canal in Guangxi was opened, practically uses the Beidou positioning systems.

It uses drones, sensors, and about, uh, I think more than 260 kilometers of fiber along its banks, dedicated 5G and edge computing facilities along with them.

So the vessel recognition traveling the route and the video analysis happens all locally within millisecond level response.

So it reduces the transportation time and reduce the cost of moving goods and build higher level of predictability for people to travel and doing business.

Let's start with a specific example, the Pinglu Canal, which opened for trail navigation on September 16 in 2026.

So what is the most important change this could bring to the southwest China, and which businesses are likely to be benefited first?

I think the most important change is that the canal gives much of the southwest China a shorter and more direct route to the sea through the Gulf.

Think of the Guangxi region where the Pinglu Canal is there to be a major play and Guangxi actually has the far large trade value with ASEAN countries.

Actually, it is nearly half of Guangxi's total foreign trade is to engage with ASEAN countries like Vienna, Malaysia, Laos, etc.

It gave them a very strong incentive.

So there's very obvious advantage by having such sort of canal with a stronger level of the connectivity and also higher level of connectivities.

So this morning, the former leader of the now-dissolved Move Forward Party will be talking about his political journey, Thailand's political system and the future of democratic reform.

All right, now we're going to move on to China because they've opened the Pinglu Canal.

It is a 134-kilometre waterway in Guangxi linking inland rivers in southwest to the Beibu Gulf, also known as the Gulf of Tonkin.

So open this month, it is China's first river-to-sea canal since 1949, cutting the inland journey to the sea by about 560 kilometres.

Okay, to get some insights into this, we'll be speaking with Dr. Fahkim Beng, Professor of ASEAN Studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia.

Good morning, Dr. Kim Beng.

For listeners then who might not be familiar with it, what exactly is the Pinglu Canal and why has its opening attracted so much attention?

Well, first of all, when ASEAN relates to China, the most extensive linkages in terms of dialogue or business initiative tend to emanate from the Guangxi province, which is to the west of Guangdong.