BEIJING: June 18, 2016. A visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to China this month resulted in 96 contracts worth US$15 billion signed between Chinese and German companies at the eighth Chinese-German Forum for Economic and Technological Cooperation.

One of them was Deutsche Bahn (DB) that reached agreement with the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation for high-speed traffic maintenance and for a regional transport project in Dalian.

Deutsche Bahn CEO Rüdiger Grube said: “The People’s Republic of China is an important market for us and will remain so in future. In view of the plans to invest more than €300 billion in transport infrastructure, we wish to benefit from the growth and potential in China.”

China Railways operates a 19,000-km long high-speed network with a fleet of 1,400 trains. DB will provide maintenance and repair support for the company.

“There is a second project of which I am particularly proud: Our experts from DB Engineering & Consulting are the first foreigners to work on a regional transport project in China. As part of a consortium, they have a consultancy contract for the operation of regional transport routes in Dalian, a city with a population of six million,” added Grube.

“There is great room for cooperation between our two countries as both upgrade their economic structure,” said Lin Nianxiu, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning body.