In an exhibition hall in Nanning's Wuxiang New Area, AI-powered glasses are translating a Vietnamese sentence into Chinese.

Next to them, visitors stop to try out demonstration stations featuring an agricultural AI large model, an AI traditional Chinese medicine diagnostic device, and a robotic coffee machine.

This is the China-ASEAN Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center, commonly known as the "Nan A Center."

On September 18, during the 23rd China-ASEAN Expo, journalists from domestic and international media toured the Nan A Center in Nanning.

Nanning is like a sluice gate.

Hu Yu, full-time deputy director of the China-ASEAN Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center (Nan A Center), once said that the upstream is the torrent of technology from domestic AI enterprises, while the downstream is the diverse array of application scenarios across ASEAN countries, and the two find their matching water level here.

Just as the Pinglu Canal opens up the water route of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, Nanning is also opening up a computing route for China-ASEAN cooperation.

Data shows that as of August this year, the Nan A Center and its supporting parks had signed a total of 102 domestic artificial intelligence projects and attracted 19 foreign-funded AI enterprises.

By the end of 2025, Guangxi's inter-provincial internet export bandwidth will reach 63.78 million megabits, and the main structure of the Nanning International Communication Business Gateway has been completed and is being rapidly put into operation.

Even more down-to-earth are the standards.

Guangxi has promoted the release of two group standards: the Specification for the Construction of ASEAN National Language Corpora and the Specification for Quality Evaluation of ASEAN National Language Corpora, filling a gap in domestic regional multilingual corpus standards and enabling AI to first learn to speak the local language before doing business.

Starting from this digital sluice gate in Nanning and following the Pinglu Canal straight to the Beibu Gulf, the Liujing operation area has adopted smart scheduling for river-rail-sea intermodal transport, the Qinzhou automated terminal enables simultaneous screen operations for sea-rail intermodal transport, and the Beihai Tieshan Port and Fangchenggang steel bases have integrated centralized control centers and AI inspections into heavy industry sites.

After the Pinglu Canal opens to navigation, the inland waterway voyage for goods from southwestern China to the sea can be shortened by about 560 kilometers, and the Beibu Gulf Port has already opened routes to multiple ASEAN countries.

Goods travel along the canal while data travels through cloud networks, and the two waterways converge in Nanning.

On August 12, a live vessel test was conducted at the Madao hub of the Pinglu Canal in Lingshan County, Qinzhou, Guangxi.

In tropical orchards in Malaysia, a durian large model led by a Chinese enterprise has compressed the time needed to count the fruit on a single tree from about 300 seconds to 3 seconds.

In Laos, a power transmission inspection large model processed 26,000 drone images and identified about 3,600 equipment defects.

The logic of research and development in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, integration in Guangxi, and application in ASEAN is also emerging in fields such as smart agriculture and energy inspection.

At the Nan A Center exhibition area, Chen Xiujuan, corporate management director of Jiejianrun Technology Group Co., Ltd., connected her phone to the screen and entered which place is more suitable for growing bananas into the agricultural AI large model Tudi AI, immediately obtaining an analysis report on climate and soil adaptability, price trends, and operational risks.

This AI product, called a 24-hour online agronomist, is backed by data support from authoritative research institutions including the China Meteorological Administration.

Chen Xiujuan introduced that the company has already implemented 30 agricultural projects in countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia, and provides customized services according to local conditions.

While bringing Chinese smart agriculture solutions into ASEAN countries, AI is also becoming a new engine for Guangxi's all-domain seaward development.

On September 16, the Pinglu Canal, a backbone project of the New Western Land-Sea Corridor, officially opened to navigation.

The photo shows the Liujing operation area of Nanning Port in Guangxi, where vehicles are loading and unloading containers.

The 23rd China-ASEAN Expo set up an AI mega market for the first time, with more than 70 enterprises and over 500 products, allowing visitors to experience them on site and place orders directly.

Wang Jicai, secretary-general of the Secretariat of the China-ASEAN Expo, compared it by saying that last year AI was a show stage, and this year AI is a marketplace, transforming AI from visible to portable.

Cargo ships, containers, and cross-border computing power are simultaneously heading toward Jakarta, Hanoi, and Phnom Penh, and the two waves of canal to the sea and digital to the cloud are converging in Guangxi.

The path of striving toward the sea for strength is becoming increasingly clear.