The CRH5 are non-tilting trains, developed for the Chinese Railways and whose technology has been transferred to local manufacturers.

As to the initial 60 sets, the first three were manufactured by Alstom's factory in Italy, and the next six were delivered in complete knock down form and assembled by CNR Changchun Railway Vehicle.

The remaining 51 sets were built by CNR Changchun through technology transfer from Alstom.

The failures were attributed to new technologies introduced on CRH5A and a relatively short trial run before the first delivery [7][8] CRH5E are cold resistant high speed sleeper trains outfitted with traditional railway sleeping berths (couchette car).

The train is painted with yellow and white color and started test run on July 1, 2007.

Now it is assigned to the Urumqi station and serves as a daytime sleeper train.