Premier Li Keqiang called for tapping the potential of the nation's southwest hinterland as he visited Qinzhou port in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Monday.

"Guangxi is the only provincial region with large ports in west China and it has the ability and conditions to become a strategic regional pivot for the whole Southwest China to develop a foreign-bound economy toward ASEAN," he told workers as he visited the port area in heavy rain.

Qinzhou is the largest port in Guangxi's Beibu Gulf Economic Zone. In 2012, Qinzhou port's handling capacity reached 100 million tons, with actual throughput of 56.2 million tons, a growth of 19 percent from a year earlier.