CNR to bid for California high-speed project

Chinese train maker submits pitch to supply fast trains for US state

China CNR Corporation, one of the country's major train makers, is taking further strides in rail exports by joining the bidding for a high-speed rail project in California, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing a member of the bidding consortium.

CNR, along with its subsidiary Tangshan Railway Vehicle Co, and SunGroup USA, a construction and development firm located in California, have put forth an expression of interest in California's $68 billion worth high-speed project for a supply contract of up to 95 trains traveling as fast as 354 kilometers per hour, according to the Reuters report that quoted the revelation by SunGroup.

Repeated calls to the Beijing--headquartered train maker seeking confirmation of the pitch went unanswered by press time. SunGroup could not be immediately reached for comment.

Buoyed by the news, CNR saw its shares up 0.16 percent to 6.10 yuan ($1) in Shanghai trading on Tuesday, outperforming a 0.72 percent fall in the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index.

The California pitch, if verified and -finalized, would mark a significant move in exporting China's rail technology, seen as a business card overseas for the nation, which boasts the world's largest high-speed rail network, industry analysts say.

Domestic train makers equipped with low-cost construction and time-efficient scheduling of deliveries maintain a competitive edge over their overseas counterparts, Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The construction cost for China's high-speed railways stands at about $30 million per kilometer, substantially more affordable compared to global averages of about $50 million per kilometer, figures provided by Wang showed.

On top of that, the nation's enormous rail network that covers a variety of rail lines and locomotives, and its efforts underway in pushing for the standardization of rail technology, serves to sharpen domestic train makers' appeal to importers of high-speed rail technology, Sun Zhang, a railway expert at Shanghai-based Tongji University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

As SunGroup spokesman Jonathan Sun was cited as saying in the Reuters article, "We believe that high-speed rail is something that China does very well, and it's a product that we can export across the world."

In a sign of Chinese rail exports' rising cachet, CNR issued an announcement on Monday according to which a consortium including CNR Changchun Vehicle Co signed on Friday a contract with State Railway of Thailand - the country's national rail operator - to supply 115 meter gauge railway passenger cars, Thailand's largest-ever railway passenger car contract.

On Thursday, Mexico's transport ministry also said a consortium led by China Railway Construction Corp has presented a $4.3 billion plan for supply of trains and construction of a 210-kilometer railway, becoming the only one to submit a proposal by the October 15 deadline.

Other major moves include China and Russia's signing of a host of cooperation deals on October 13 that highlight high-speed railway construction and the Tuesday announcement of CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co's supply of 30 light rail trains to Malaysia.

In anticipation of a wider popularity of China's rail exports in years to come, Wang noted that the nation will also be eyeing three future high-speed routes that are of strategic importance - the lines heading for Europe by way of Russia, the lines passing through Central Asian countries starting off at Urumqi, capital of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and lines connecting Southwest -China's Yunnan Province and Southeast Asian countries including Singapore.