Speedy Construction of the Southern Transport Corridor helping to Upgrade the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone— Exclusive Interview with Wei Ran, Director of the Office of Beibu Gulf Economic Zone & Cooperation with ASEAN Countries

The China-Singapore Connectivity Initiative — Southern Transport Corridor undertakes the historical missions of connecting with the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road, reconstructing the trade routes and logistics pattern in west China, optimizing the economic landscape of the western region, and advancing the practical cooperation between China and ASEAN. In the middle of 2018, as the first phase of the container handling station at Qinzhou Port East Railway Station was officially put into construction, a major bottleneck for the building of the Southern Transport Corridor was broken. As a key link for the sea-rail multimodal transport along the Southern Transport Corridor, it will play a big role in coordinating land and marine development.

The Beibu Gulf Economic Zone of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is both a key point linking the Belt and the Road and an important hub of the Southern Transport Corridor.In promoting the international land and maritime trade through the Southern Transport Corridor, what kinds of new cooperation models could be created between ASEAN and the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone? And what “early harvests” have been achieved in the key infrastructure projects of the Beibu Gulf port logistics collection and distribution system and in China-ASEAN Port Cities Cooperation Network?

Recently,China-ASEAN Panoramahad a written interview with Wei Ran, Director of the Office of Beibu Gulf Economic Zone& Cooperation with ASEAN Countries (hereinafter referred to as the Office), on the progress of the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone in pushing forward the construction of the Southern Transport Corridor.

Building a pool of talents to strengthen cooperation

The broad market prospects behind the Southern Transport Corridor have aroused great attention from domestic and international port and shipping industry. Wei Ran believes that,benefited from the optimized construction of the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone together with the opportunities presented by the Southern Transport Corridor, the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone and ASEAN can strengthen the reserve of talents and cooperation in such fields as port and shipping, international production capacity, and finance, and jointly enhance customs clearance facilitation and international economic and trade cooperation.

Currently, the Office is trying to involve CRIntermodal in the construction and operation of the container handling station at Qinzhou Port East Railway Station, and striving to build it into a railway container center. Upon completion, the container handling capacity of Qinzhou Port will see a significant increase from 116,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) to 800,000 TEUs per year, taking the lead among the railway container centers and handling stations in China, which can meet the development demand of container transport in the Beibu Gulf for the next five years. At the same time, recent years have also witnessed growing cooperation between Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group and Port of Singapore Authority and Pacific International Lines in terms of berths, infrastructure, and industrial projects.

Wei Ran said that the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone could fully leverage the strengths of these enterprises in the management and operation of port and shipping, IT application in port,and personnel training, and work with them to train a pool of logistics and corridor operation professionals, so as to build a contingent of personnel with an international vision and advanced management skills for the construction and development of the Southern Transport Corridor.

Coordinating the development land and marine transport to connect with ASEAN

As the construction of the major land and sea transport routes of the Southern Transport Corridor is progressing, the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone has launched several container train routes along the Southern Transport Corridor, including the Chongqing-Guangxi (Qinzhou Port-Chongqing) route and Chengdu-Guangxi (Qinzhou Port-Chengdu) route. It has also opened shipping routes connecting the Beibu Gulf Port to Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and the Middle East. The stable operation of the sea-rail multimodal transport routes has laid a solid foundation for the full operation of the Southern Transport Corridor, giving impetus to making it a new route to realize the value of international land and sea trade.

In Wei Ran’s view, on one hand, based on the smooth and efficient trade logistics through the Southern Transport Corridor, the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone can better exploit the comparative advantages of both sides, and jointly build industrial parks with ASEAN, carry out cross-border economic cooperation, build a platform for cities cooperation, improve industrial resource allocation, and create regional and international industrial chains. It will support those well-known financial institutions of ASEAN member states in conducting offshore finance business in Guangxi. It will also support the exploration and development of ship finance, and improve the logistics financial service system. On the other hand, with regard to economic and trade cooperation, the “two countries, one inspection” system, China-ASEAN Information Harbor, and China-ASEAN Port Logistics Information Center all provide much room for the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone and ASEAN to cooperate in customs clearance facilitation. Wei Ran said that,more involvement of relevant ASEAN economic, trade and customs departments, as well as enterprises in the fields of port,shipping, trade, and logistics into the above platforms can help realize information sharing, thus to boost the logistics and trade development of both sides through information cooperation.

It is reported that in 2018, a planned investment of about RMB 1,939 billion yuan will be used for building a number of deepwater channels and berths in Beibu Gulf Port. A series of major projects of the Southern Transport Corridor, including the China-Singapore (Nanning) International Logistics Park,and expansion of the eastern channel in Qinzhou Port, have been put on the agenda. Wei Ran said that when completed,the China-Singapore (Nanning) International Logistics Park will effectively strengthen the economic and trade cooperation between Guangxi and Singapore, and become a smart logistics platform for the multimodal transport of the Southern Transport Corridor, a modern service industrial cluster area, as well as a node and demonstration project of the Southern Transport Corridor.

Construction of port network yielding fruitful “early harvests”

Thanks to Guangxi’s unremitting efforts in building the Southern Transport Corridor in the past three years, the “friends circle” of the China-ASEAN Port Cities Cooperation Network has been expanding. At present, the number of its members has increased to 31, including 9 from ASEAN that cover the major port-related institutions of China and ASEAN member states. This means a new breakthrough achieved by the China-ASEAN Port Cities Cooperation Network in the cooperation of information sharing, and enables it to play a new role — the Chinese sides providing the logistic information of railway,highway, and major ports for other members. This move has won high attention and recognition from other members, and marked a new stage of jointly building the information and the logistics networks by all.

How to use such “early harvests” to coordinate the development of the China-ASEAN Port Cities Cooperation Network and the Southern Transport Corridor? Wei Ran said that, the Office has been endeavoring to incorporate the China-ASEAN Port Cities Cooperation Network into such cooperation mechanisms as China-ASEAN Connectivity Cooperation Committee, and China-ASEAN Transport Ministers Meeting, so as to form an integrated channel network through multimodal transport and cross-border transport. It has planned to open more container shipment routes from Beibu Gulf Port to the outside, strive for an early realization of “daily operation” of the container shipment routes from Beibu Gulf Port to Singapore and Hong Kong, and increase the number of ships from Beibu Gulf Port to Thailand’s Laem Chabang Port, Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh Port and Haiphong Port, and Malaysia’s Kuantan Port. At the same time, it will work faster to make breakthroughs in a number of key demonstration and pro fitable projects.

Complementary implementation of priorities for upgrading

According to Wei Ran, the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone is currently working hard to see an upgrading in six aspects,namely planning and construction, open economy, development momentum, industry development, infrastructure, and integration of urban development, each with its own priorities.The priorities for the upgrading of infrastructure are, centering on the Southern Transport Corridor, to promote the planning of Beibu Gulf regional international shipping center, and the construction of light rails, cross-border railways, highways,and northward high-speed railways. The upgrading of open economy is aimed at transforming trade growth model and building key experimental platforms and regional distribution platforms for international factors and resources. The upgrade of development momentum focuses on deepening reforms of port construction and operation, and of the investment and financing system, and building an innovation system with regional characteristics. And the upgrade of industry development means creating six 100-billion-dollar industrial clusters, and implementing the plans to multiply emerging industries and build a modern service industrial cluster area.The upgrading of these aspects is complementary with each other, and plays an important role in implementing the blueprint for breaking new ground in the sound development of the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone.

According to the plan, the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone is working to see that both the regional GDP and total industrial output value above designated size exceed RMB 1 trillion yuan,and GDP per capita surpass US$ 10,000 by 2020.