Summary：With a decade, China’s high-speed railways have grown out of nothing to 6,894 kilometers, ranking first in the world.

With a decade, China’s high-speed railways have grown out of nothing to 6,894 kilometers, ranking first in the world.

Within a decade, China’s railway operation mileage has grown constantly and extended at a rate of six kilometers per day.

Within a decade, CSR has constantly created new products and technologies and ranked among world top enterprises with the extension of railway lines.

Everyday, a new life of travel is interpreting on Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway operated like a bus line.

Since the first high-speed EMU manufactured by CSR went into operation in 2006, the convenient, comfortable and fashionable means of transport has been unconsciously updating people’s common sense of transport. 

Jumping to world number one

According to a research report released by renowned German consulting agency SCI Verkehr, CSR topped the list of the world top 10 rail transit equipment manufacturers in the field of new manufacturing [w1] in 2010.

In the early days, CSR had a business turnover of only 10.3 billion yuan and a negative net profit. Within a decade, the accelerated development of the rail transit industry in China and the world has provided strong support for the high-end development of China’s rail transit equipment. Facing the opportunity, CSR has gained rapid development through technical innovation and by independent brand. In 2011, CSR’s business turnover topped 80 billion yuan, eight times as much as that in its early days; and its net profit attributable to the shareholders of the parent company was up to 3.86 billion yuan.

CSR has yielded bumper fruits in developing high-end equipment including high-speed EMUs, large-power locomotives and environment-friendly urban metro vehicles. By June 2012, CSR has supplied 549 standard high-speed EMUs to high-speed lines in operation, accounting for nearly 60 percent, with a total safe operation mileage of 513 million kilometers. CRH380A that set a record of 486.1km/h in global railway operation test has become the mouthpiece of China’s railways in the era of high-speed rail. The test speed of the 500km/h higher-speed test train reached a record 605km/h on the test bench.

To accommodate the super large freight volume of China’s basic materials, CSR has introduced large-power AC locomotive and diesel locomotive wit the highest power in the world. HXD1 coupled locomotive can haul a 20000t thermal coal train and stretch several kilometers on Datong-Qinhuangdao Railway, making the annual freight volume of the railway top 400 million tons. It may be rated as a miracle in the world history of rail transit.

In the urban metro field, an array of CSR’s new products comparable to their advanced foreign counterparts have emerged, including linear motor metro vehicle, localized Type-A metro vehicle, medium & low-speed maglev train and energy-storing light rail train. CSR has so far supplied 5,755 metro vehicles to 18 central cities and held a share of over 60 percent in the Chinese market over the past five years. 

Innovation becomes core competitiveness
On August 10, 2012, CSR and the Chinese Academy of Engineering concluded a technological cooperation agreement. Under the agreement, the two sides will work together in four fields—“strategic consultation service, intensifying cooperative R & D and achievement transformation, carrying out technological cooperation and exchanges, introducing and training high-end technological talents”. This is another footnote to CSR’s efforts to accelerate technical innovation.
Manufacturing represents national strength and innovation ability is undoubtedly the core competitiveness of manufacturing. A new product came out every few years a decade ago, but CSR has introduced eight new products in the first eight months of 2012. The strategy of “technology leadership” has produced effects.

Behind the achievements were CSR’s great efforts to improve the capacity for technical innovation. In recent years, CSR’s annual R & D input has accounted for five to six percent of its annual sales revenues. The company has established four national R & D and experiment institutions, six state-accredited corporate technical centers, nine state-accredited test and experimental centers, six postdoctoral workstations and two academician work stations, and has built the first overseas industrial power and electronic R & D center of China’s rail transit equipment manufacturing in the U.S. and a semiconductor R & D centers in the UK. 

CSR has pooled the efforts of the whole group to build world advanced design, manufacturing and product technology platforms, to consolidate the innovation foundation. CSR has established enterprise-university or enterprise-institute innovation alliances with higher institutes and institutions including Tsinghua University, Tongji University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to carry out in-depth cooperation in research fields.

By late 2011, CSR had won 3,688 patents, and participated in formulating six international standards, 49 national standards and 281 industrial standards.

Now CSR has the only two academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in China’s rail transit equipment industry as well as 12,000 engineers. On the most representative EMU and large-power locomotive technology platforms, CSR has brought together an array of high-end technological talents with an average age of 40. 

Broadening global development space

On August 13, 2012, the signing ceremony of the metro project in Ankara was held at the Assembly Hall of the Ministry of Transport and Communication of Turkey. CSR signed a 2.5 billion yuan worth of contract for the metro vehicle project in Ankara.

Less than a month later, CSR announced the successful bid for a locomotive order worth nearly 400 million US dollarsfrom Transnet, South Africa, China’s largest of its kind from abroad.

Today when globalization is highly developed, closed-door policy is doomed to failure. CSR not only “brings in talents and technologies” modestly, but also “goes out” confidently. With the development of globalization, CSR has saw the rapid growth of its export trade, progressively built overseas R & D and manufacturing bases, and accomplished the switch of export trade from startup to acceleration, the switch from low-end exported products to high-end ones, the switch of export destinations from developing countries to developed countries and the switch of operation mode from international trade to internationalized operation.

Overseas investment and technology output are top priorities of internationalization. In this regard, CSR has taken over Canada-listed Dynex, UK, established 10 branches and subsidiaries in countries and regions including the US, the UK, Australia, Brazil and Malaysia, offices and overseas service outlets in a dozen countries and regions, and R & D institutions in the US and UK.

Meanwhile, a growing number of national railways have become CSR’s partners. To date, CSR has exported various vehicles and parts to 66 countries and regions in the world, covering Asia, America, Oceania, Africa and Europe, with its exports soaring from less than 59 million US dollars in 2011 to nearly 1 billion US dollars in 2011. In the first half of 2011, CSR’s overseas revenues doubled, accounting for 11.33 percent of CSR’s total revenues against 6.13 percent last year. In the first eight months of 2012, CSR got overseas orders worth nearly 1.7 billion US dollars, doubling the total value of overseas orders in 2011 and hitting a new record.