General Manager Lu Dongfu said CRC is promoting the asset-backed securitization and equity financing of the railways sector and welcomed Alibaba's participation, without providing further details.

Lu said he hoped the two sides could deepen cooperation in areas such as high-speed railways, international logistics, electronic payments and mixed ownership reform on the basis of consolidating the application of Alipay, the digital wallet run by Alibaba, information verification services, and station navigation.

Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba, said his group is willing to further deepen relations with the national railway operator. He said Alibaba will combine its technical strengths in big data, cloud computing, and e-commerce services with the capital and resources of CRC, to build a new business and operations model.

By the end of 2016, China had a 124,000-kilometer-long railway system, featuring the world's largest high-speed rail network with more than 20,000 km of track.

The railway has been selected as one of the seven sectors for mixed ownership reform of State-owned enterprises this year.

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