Substandard cables replaced, top railway operator says

China Railway Corp said on Friday that it had replaced all cables provided by a company found to be supplying substandard product that might ignite and release toxic gases.

“We always make transport safety the priority. We have replaced all cables provided by Shaanxi Aokai Cable Co,” the country’s top railway operator said in a statement on Friday.

The railway operator said that after it learned from media reports that the company’s cables had been found to be substandard, it immediately investigated which rail lines used the products.

Affected railway lines include those connecting Baoji, Shaanxi province, to Lanzhou, Gansu province; Xi’an, Shaanxi province, to Chengdu, Sichuan province; Chongqing to Guiyang, Guizhou province; and Lanzhou to Chongqing.

The problematic cables were first found to have been used on subway Line 3 in Xi’an.

Eight people at the private company, which was established in 2012, have been detained, and local police also shut down the company’s product sites, sealed its ledger and took other cable products for further testing.

So far, metro systems in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and Hefei, Anhui province, were found to have used cables from the same company. But the Beijing metro said no lines in the capital used Aokai’s products.

Cheng du metro said it would replace all cables supplied by Aokai, while He fei metro said it is waiting for test results.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine requested on Thursday a nationwide inspection of companies producing electric wires and cables. The inspection, which will last until the end of June, will focus on cracking down on substandard products and guaranteeing quality.