BUDAPEST, May 5 -- China's CRRC Industrial Investment Co, amalgamating companies with a transportation focus, held a joint ceremony here on Thursday to mark the opening of CRRC Investment's European office.

The goal of the new regional office in Budapest will be to explore European state-of-the-art technologies and industries, and to invest in them.

In keeping with China's "One Belt One Road" strategy, it plans to seek out Hungarian and other European businesses operating with top-of-the-line technologies and form technical cooperation ventures.

CRRC Urban Traffic and the Hungarian branch of Bank of China signed a memorandum of financial cooperation at the event, aimed at jointly offering comprehensive urban public transport services to the Central and Eastern European countries.

CRRC Urban Traffic President Gu Yifeng said one reason the new Budapest center was being set up was to accelerate the dissemination of CRRC's system throughout Europe.

Headquartered in Beijing, the CRRC was formed in June 2015 through the merger of China CNR Corporation and CSR Corporation Limited, and is the world's largest supplier of rail transportation equipment.