High-speed rail hopes to lay tracks overseas

China's high-speed railway technologies are looking for increased export markets as Chinese companies acquire independent intellectual property. 

Earlier last year, California's lower house approved financing for a new railway line that will link the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles at an estimated cost of $68 billion. China's Ministry of Railways had announced that Chinese companies would form a group to enter the bidding. 

"One of the favorite bids for the project has come from a Chinese consortium, and it is China which has built more high-tech, high-speed railway links than anyone else in the last year," BBC News reported in 2011 about China's bids. 

Professor Richard White from Stanford University, was quoted in the same report as saying that "the way they are talking about building it now will be American labor laying the tracks, but heavy investments in Chinese technology and even trying to get inputs of Chinese capital. 

"It's as if the Pacific has suddenly switched over in 150 years." 

Also, earlier reports disclosed progress on China's high-speed railway technical cooperation with other countries, including Russia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. 

The 'going-out' strategy of China's high-speed railway technologies is supported by growing efforts to protect intellectual property rights. 

"As far as I am concerned, there is not a single legal intellectual property rights dispute over China's high-speed railway technologies," said Tian Lipu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office. 

"Although we did buy technologies from Germany, France, Canada and Japan, our Chinese scientists 'digested' the technologies we bought legally, and developed our own technology," Tian said.