Editor’s Note:

Over the past decade, Shenzhen has enthusiastically engaged in deepening exchanges and collaborations in areas such as infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds with Belt and Road countries. Shenzhen Daily is presenting a series of reports on the city’s active role in boosting the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Han Ximin

1824295095@qq.com

OVER the past decade, Shenzhen has actively participated in the construction of infrastructure and smart transport projects of countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Shenzhen’s urban planning authority participated in the planning of the new capital of Indonesia, while Shenzhen Metro offered operational support for railways in Cairo. Hytera, a leading global provider of professional communications technologies and solutions based in Shenzhen, helped to upgrade the railway signal system for Kazakhstan.

Railway signal

upgrading

Kazakhstan, the world’s largest landlocked country, is the place where the Belt and Road Initiative was first proposed. Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan and the economic hub of Central Asia, has been a major transportation hub for all Sino-Europe trains entering and exiting Khorgos Port in Xinjiang for the past decade.

Wang Xu, country manager of Hytera in Kazakhstan, has been in the country for eight years. The company provides technical services for Kazakhstan’s railway.

After the BRI was implemented, the cargo load of Kazakhstan’s railways has increased significantly. Improving the efficiency of its transportation arteries is something Kazakhstan has to solve.

“Kazakhstan trains are old and they want us to transmit railway signal data through our integrated trunking system,” Wang said. One of the challenges was to communicate with various departments in Kazakhstan, and it took a lot of time because each different department had varied, sometimes conflicting opinions. After research, development, and numerous tests in six years, the setup for the customized service system was finally completed and put into operation in February 2023.

At Satbayev University, which is dubbed as the Cradle of Engineers of Kazakhstan, Hytera inaugurated a technology exchange center in 2022 in cooperation with Kazakhstan Railway.

Azat Turlybekovich Peruashe, deputy of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and chairman of the Ak Zhol Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, said during an interview with Shenzhen media that he had seen changes in the transportation infrastructure in the past decade as the result of the BRI.

Metro operation

As an exemplary project of China-Egypt cooperation, the 10th of Ramadan Railway was officially put into trial operation in July 2022. The line links Cairo, the 10th of Ramadan — an important satellite city of Cairo — and Egypt’s new Administrative Capital, providing transportation for nearly 5 million people.

It is the first electrified railway in Egypt to use Chinese technology and equipment and was built to Chinese standards.

In 2021, Shenzhen Metro sent a team of over 40 people to Cairo to provide consulting, equipment tests, and trial run training to local operators.

A local maintenance dispatcher of the railway, identified as Chernow, once studied in Nanjing in 2018. He said he had learned a lot from his supervisor Zeng Wei, a member of the Shenzhen team.

“Previously, local Egyptians organized trial runs by themselves but failed, leaving all trains to jam on the rail due to a lack of operational proficiency,” said Zeng Wei, manager of the operation dispatching department of the Egyptian project of Shenzhen Metro International Investment & Consulting Co. Ltd.

Dispatching multiple trains simultaneously requires experience and expertise. Shenzhen Metro’s Line 5, for example, is loaded with 60 trains during peak hours and can handle a total of 691 train trips a day. Shenzhen’s experience is useful in Egypt. The Shenzhen team also participated in the test for the line’s speed acceleration after it was put into operation.

Smart city projects

In July last year, Shenzhen Mayor Qin Weizhong met with a visiting Indonesian delegation led by Bambang Susantono, chairman of Indonesia’s Nusantara National Capital Authority.

In the meeting, Qin said Shenzhen will actively support the construction of Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara. One of Susantono’s missions was to seek cooperation with Shenzhen in the construction of the supporting clusters in Nusantara Capital City (IKN).

At the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing in October 2023, Indonesia signed a memorandum with China on the development of IKN in East Kalimantan. IKN will cooperate with China in terms of technology transfer for the green cities and smart cities, and the development of its electric vehicle industry and green energy sector. The cooperation will provide opportunities for Shenzhen firms to participate.

In western Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea Project is a brand new tourism hub that’s being developed on the country’s western coast between the cities of Umluj and Al Wajh. In December 2023, the world’s first gigawatt-scale 100% photovoltaic energy standalone micro-grid project, built by Huawei, went into operation; it provides green power to 1 million local people. In addition, Huawei also provided high-quality communications infrastructure for the country and has launched a series of digital solutions for local education, health care, and other fields to help build smart cities.