France minister eyes China co-op on transportation
Updated: 2011-09-22 17:18
By Yu Ran (China Daily Shanghai Bureau)
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SHANGHAI – As the fifth visit of Thierry Mariani, France's transport minister, in China, he was looking forward to make further cooperation with Chinese companies and universities on education, engineering and aviation programs.
"I'm so glad that I could give a speech as the sponsor of the second year's Sino-French Engineering class at the Civil Aviation University of China (CAUC) in Tianjin to promote the education cooperation between France and China," said Mariani.
Mariani added that there are two other universities in China having similar education program related to engineering, aviation cooperated with universities in France.
Talking about the railway, roads, airplane and ports system in France, he felt very proud of the fast speed train in the country in particular.
"Fast speed train was the most important program in France as we had our first high-speed train launched in 1981 between Paris and Lyon." said Mariani, "Now we have a great program with four new lines under construction in the same time."
Mariani added that it's the first time that they're making four lines in the same time and hopefully an expansion of 2,000 kilometers for the railway lines in ten years by making France be the first country in Europe having the network of high-speed train.
Since the launch of France high-speed train, nearly 2 billion passengers had taken it with zero death tolls for accidents.
"I think sometimes it's better to put more money to keep the safety and we have very strong rule about safety as we've got an independent department to make sure and control the safety of the railway system in France," said Mariani.
In addition, the newly released regulation on the seaports competitiveness in France aimed to ease the global port trading situation in the country.
"The new policy for ports enables our ports to be more competitive for trading again to welcome more business partners especially from China to load their products more freely and more frequently," said Mariani.