The series report "Visiting Famous Enterprises at the Start of the Year" visits China Railway Engineering Group Co., Ltd. As of 2023, China's high-speed rail operating mileage reached 45,000 kilometers, more than half of which was built with the participation of China Railway. In the traditional infrastructure industry, how can technology-rich architectural landmarks be created, and how can unprecedented infrastructure challenges be met?

On November 28, 2023, the Qingbaijiang East to Zhenjiangguan section of the Sichuan-Qinghai Railway officially opened for operation, ending the history of no railway access in northwestern Sichuan.

Chen Yun, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Railway: Carbonaceous phyllite looks extremely hard, but it is actually very brittle—it breaks off with a twist of the hand, and once soaked in water it turns into "tofu dregs." So during tunnel construction we faced unprecedented technical challenges; at the most difficult times, we could not advance even one centimeter in a day.

This "tofu dregs" tunnel is the most difficult part of the plateau railway construction. It lies in the Longmenshan seismic fault zone in Sichuan and faces risks such as active fault zones and debris flow geological disasters. However, a tunnel construction scheme modeled on the deformable spine of an animal solved the problem.

Chen Yun, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Railway: We mainly adopted a staggered displacement design approach, reserving space for future mountain displacement caused by earthquakes so as not to affect engineering safety. In construction, we broke through a number of traditional techniques and methods, producing more than 100 innovative achievements.

Not only the plateau tunnel, but also a batch of tunnel projects facing worldwide challenges—such as the "Ten-Thousand-Li Yangtze River ** Long Tunnel" with an underwater excavation distance of 9,300 meters—have been overcome one by one, setting multiple world records in tunnel engineering. As *** tunnel excavation equipment, the shield machine contains tens of thousands of components, among which the key technology breakthrough in the wireless remote control is solving electromagnetic interference resistance.

Chen Yun, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Railway: We carried out independent research, mainly to solve the "bottleneck" problems in the control system.

This "steel pangolin" is climbing upward for operation, and it has also set a new world record.

On December 14, 2023, the world's first large-diameter hard rock tunnel boring machine capable of climbing steep slopes, the "Yongning," successfully completed the No. 1 water diversion inclined shaft of the Luoning Pumped Storage Power Station, filling the technical gap in the field of inclined shaft construction with hard rock tunnel boring machines in China, and adding another new achievement to the nation's major equipment.

Chen Yun, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Railway: There are also machines that can turn corners. Whatever the requirements, we can manufacture shield machines that meet construction needs.

At present, China's shield machines account for 70% of the global market share, and China Railway's shield machine production and sales have ranked ** in the world for six consecutive years.

The Changtai Yangtze River Bridge under construction is the ** river-crossing bridge over the Yangtze to integrate expressways, ordinary highways, and railways into a "trinity." Once completed, it will set two world records: the world's largest-span cable-stayed bridge and the world's largest-span road-rail dual-purpose steel arch bridge—and all of this is inseparable from intelligent construction.

Chen Yun, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Railway: What is shown in this image is the caisson construction for Pier No. 6. For such a large prefabricated caisson, from floating transport to placement at the designated position, it is a *** challenge. Through an intelligent sensing system, we have achieved visibility, measurability, and controllability during the sinking and placement process. This should be a historic progress and represents new quality productive forces in this field.

On October 17, 2023, the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway officially opened for operation. This is also the ** project in which China's high-speed rail has been implemented overseas with the entire system, all elements, and the full industrial chain.

Chen Yun, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Railway: International engineering contracting has now moved from the original single-project contracting to the collective going-global of the industrial chain. We not only export Chinese standards and technical specifications, but also participate in the formulation of some international standards and specifications.

Reporter Yuan Yi: The rail transit industry chain is very long and has strong driving capacity. As the chain leader, how do you drive the coordinated high-quality development of upstream and downstream industries?

Chen Yun, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Railway: We mostly drive innovation and breakthroughs in equipment, materials, design, and computational theory through construction, jointly helping to form a complete modern industrial chain system marked by high-speed railway. We have one experience: only through continuous innovation can more major national equipment and major national brands be forged.