In the afternoon of August 24th 2015, Mr. Yin Gang, President of CRSC, received a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) railway delegation headed by Mr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Al-Sabti, Director of Transport Department of GCC Secretariat General, at CRSC Rail Transportation R & D Center. The two sides had an in-depth discussion and wide-ranging conversation about such issues as railway planning and construction, Chinese and European standards on train control technology, Chinese experience in desert railway construction and financial support.
Mr. Yin Gang expressed his warm welcome to the GCC railway delegation to CRSC and gave a brief introduction to construction achievements in high speed railways in China and general information on CRSC. Mr. Yin stressed that CRSC is the only entity responsible for the management of the equipment modes, technical standards and product standards for rail transport control systems in China, a company with world-leading independently-developed technologies across the entire industry chain, the only company able to provide an entire suite of products and services across the entire industry chain in the world, and a leading company in the railway control system industry in China. He noted that, considering that national strategies have a direct bearing on railway construction, consideration should be given to not only interoperability between not only the railway networks of Gulf countries, but also interoperability between railway networks of Gulf countries and Euro-Asia land transportation network. He added that, as the Chinese government had proposed the development strategy of “One Belt, One Road”, a pioneering undertaking in human history, CRSC was ready to have all-around cooperation with Gulf countries, sharing its achievements in the development of high speed railways and experience on the social and economic impacts of high speed railways.
During their visit, the members of the railway delegation asked questions on such topics as compatibility between Chinese and European standards on train control technology, construction of desert railways and cooperation on railway investment; and the technical experts and persons-in-charge of investment department of CRSC gave professional and detailed answers. One of the technical experts said, “Chinese Train Control System (CTCS) was designed in consideration of the compatibility requirements of ETCS system, a mainstream signaling system in the world, to achieve interoperability between CTCS-3 and ETCS-2 trains”.
GCC has completed the planning and will initiate the construction of GCC railway network, which extends about 2,177 km from Kuwait to Oman, via Saudi Arabi, Bahrain, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. CRSC passed the prequalification of the section in Qatar in early 2014.
The event was also joined by Mr. Mutlaq Shahad Al-Mutlaq, Director of Customs Department of GCC Secretariat General, and Mr. Ramiz Al-Assar, resident Work Bank advisor to GCC, as well as Mr. Huang Weizhong, Vice President of CRSC, business representatives of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and persons-in-charge of CRSC International, CRSCD, and CRSC Investment.