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Published on Oct. 14, 2026

On the twentieth floor of the Canal Building, No.10 Songxiang Road in Nanning, AI agents work alongside human dispatchers. Ships berthing, passing through locks and navigating rivers and canals in the region appear on big computer screens.

Supporting them is the “Smart Water Transport Large AI Model.” It uses algorithms to process data from ship locks, ports and has access to vessel tracking in real-time via China's Beidou satellite network.

Since September, shipping traffic using the newly built Pinglu Canal, the deepwater seaport at its end and the nearby rivers is centrally managed with the help of AI. There are first efficiency gains, reported Renmin Wang, the online edition of the People's Daily, on October 8, 2026 (in Chinese).

Two AI agents help schedule vessels on the inland waterways and the deepwater terminals at Qinzhou.

The first scheduling agent coordinates 5,000 metric ton barges as they pass many ship locks on the way to the coast. They are not only spared unnecessary delays, but also directed to arrive at the harbor just in time to meet the oceangoing freighters waiting for them.

The second scheduling agent can rapidly generate vessel berthing and departure plans for the ocean freighters at Qinzhou port. Time is money for ship owners and their clients. The AI makes sure none is wasted.

Preparing a 72-hour berthing plan at the port used to require planners to check each constraint individually, including vessel-type priorities and restrictions on berths for hazardous cargo. The process typically took more than an hour, Lin Yuchao, a planning supervisor at Qinzhou’s Honggang Terminal, told the Chinese science newspaper Keji Ribao.

The AI agent can now “generate a berth arrangement that satisfies all relevant constraints within just a few minutes. After manual review and minor adjustments, it can be submitted to the chief dispatcher. This has not only greatly reduced the daily workload, but has also further improved the compliance and accuracy of the planning process,” Lin said.

The efficiency gains brought by this deployment of AI are also felt by the vessel owners motoring down the canal. In the past, they had to submit a separate declaration each time they passed through a lock. Now, they log in to a WeChat mini-program on their phones, register, and the platform handles the declaration for the whole journey.

“You only need to tell me where you are departing from and which port you are heading to. You tell me once, and the platform tells you how your entire journey will be scheduled,” Chen Zisong, deputy director of Guangxi’s water transport administration division, explained to a reporter from the outlet Fengmian Xinwen. “That is why we call it seamless river-sea navigation.”

More than 2,000 years ago, ancient Chinese engineers invented what is regarded as one of the world's earliest ship lock, enabling them to lift and lower vessels through mountainous terrain.

For Chinese emperors of all times, building efficient infrastructure to enable prosperity for their people has always been imperative to keep the “Mandate of Heaven” justifying their rule. This expectation has not changed, but fulfilling it now means building a canal with an artificial brain.

The AI models and agents for the Pinglu Canal were developed by the Tianjin Research Institute for Water Transport Engineering under the Ministry of Transport and local computer scientists in Guangxi and Shanghai. The canal itself is the first river-to-sea canal planned and coordinated at the national level since 1949.

The artificial intelligence is deployed in several layers. The large AI model for the Pinglu Canal identifies operational intent and analyzes complex operating conditions, taking into account water levels, weather data and the special needs of hazardous cargo.

Smaller AI models calculate lock schedules and berth allocations within those constraints. At the same time, human dispatchers remain a vital part of the process. A plan may be ready at lightning speed, but somebody has to remain in charge and approve it. “After a person reviews it and makes minor adjustments, it can be submitted to the chief dispatcher,” Lin said.

The system has just been operating since July, when first pilots started. Now, after the Pinglu Canal has opened, shipping traffic is increasing fast. Although it is too early for a comprehensive assessment, there are first reports suggesting significant efficiency gains.

“At pilot terminals in Qinzhou Port, preparation of 72-hour round-the-clock vessel arrival and departure plans has been reduced from 1.5 hours to less than one minute,” wrote Renmin Wang.

“Emergency response times have fallen from hours to minutes. The average vessel waiting time for berths has also been reduced by two hours, significantly improving scheduling efficiency,” the portal reported.

“To protect the ecosystem, the project also features China’s first eel passage and a vertical-slot fishway, while AI can monitor fish movements in real time”, reported the Xinhua news agency.

The Pinglu Canal is just 134.2 kilometers long, but some officials have dubbed it “China's infrastructure project of the century.” An opinion piece in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post calls it a “a milestone in modern Chinese history”.

The canal earned these superlatives not because of the deployment of AI, but because it was the missing link in a new waterborne trade route in western China, designed to give the country's relatively underdeveloped inland provinces alternative, closer access to the ocean.

The canal shortens the inland waterway journey for goods from southwestern China to the sea by more than 560 kilometers compared with traditional routes through ports in Guangdong Province.

The Pinglu Canal has been built to facilitate trade between China and the ASEAN states in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.

ASEAN, as a bloc, has been China's biggest trading partner for many years. The waterway also connects to important railway lines from China to Europe. The Pinglu Canal opens “a new route to the ocean for western China”, wrote the Xinhua news agency.

Beijing calls this western trade route the “New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor“. Chinese media report that the canal is expected to reduce logistics costs by 18 to 30 percent and save more than five billion yuan (about US$750 million) in transportation costs every year.

With Chinese exports running up against ever higher protectionist barriers in Europe and the U.S., the importance of the ASEAN market with its 693 million people for the Chinese economy has been steadily increasing.

“The game-changing canal is a physical response to an economic reality. Asia’s growth is becoming more regional and more connected,” the South China Morning Post wrote on September 26.

That is why the central government spared no effort to construct the canal. Its upper section had to be blasted through Guangxi's mountainous interior.

Three sets of massive ship locks, capable of lifting loaded ships up to 5,000 metric tons, overcome a 65-meter decline to sea level between Nanning and the ocean.

From Beijing's perspective, a lot depends on these large models and AI agents delivering the efficiency gains their developers claim they are capable of.