Angela Merkel finished her maiden trip to China as German Chancellor with a cruise on Shanghai's futuristic Maglev train yesterday.

Merkel's business-centred visit concluded with her riding from Longyang Road to Pudong International Airport on the Siemens-made magnetic train.

After clinching 19 major business co-operation deals on Monday, Merkel met members of the German business community in Shanghai during her 16-hour long visit to the city, making sure they were the first to know about the freshly inked agreements.

"You have already done a good job in Shanghai," Merkel told them. "The 2010 Shanghai World Expo is a good opportunity for you, too."

As chairman of Germany-based cleaning equipment company Karcher Cleaning Systems Co Ltd's Shanghai division, Klaus Puehmeyer was optimistic about the business opportunities generated by the Chancellor's visit.

"It helps the German Government understand the economic and general situation in China, especially in Shanghai," said Puehmeyer.

As Merkel said during her speech yesterday morning, "To see it once is better than to hear it a hundred times," Puehmeyer said the speed of development in Shanghai could only be understood by seeing it with one's own eyes.

"Shanghai's business environment has improved tremendously over the last few years and is one of the best in China and Asia today," he said.

Puehmeyer added that with interest from both Germany and other WTO countries foreign investment and business opportunities for existing Shanghai companies will continue to grow.

Of the 19 deals signed on Monday which span topics ranging from finance and telecommunications to energy three were concerned with railways.

Though Premier Wen Jiabao said in Beijing that "China has a positive attitude to co-operation with Germany over Maglev technology," an expected agreement on the Maglev link between Shanghai and nearby Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, was not signed.

The link project, scheduled to be completed in 2010, is estimated to cost 35 billion yuan (US$4.4 billion) and was approved by the Chinese Government in March. A Siemens-led group is now bidding for the project.

While feasibility studies on the 200-kilometer line are still underway, German companies including Siemens have already been involved in its preliminary work.

The route's general technological scheme as well as schemes for its subsystems have already been completed, announced Wu Xiangming, director of the China National Maglev Transportation Engineering Technology Research Centre, in Beijing on Monday.

The train Merkel took is the only Maglev train in China, and was built in 2004 with the help of German technology.

Its 30-kilometre railway, linking downtown Shanghai to Pudong Airport, has been commercially run for two years without safety problems.

As a daughter of a preacher and a devoted Christian herself, Merkel also took time to visit Xujiahui Cathedral, the largest Catholic church in the city, and met Jin Luxian, the 91-year-old bishop of the Catholic Parish of Shanghai yesterday morning.

She also took a 20-minute morning tour of the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre before a midday meeting with Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng.

(China Daily May 24, 2006)