China speeds bullet train exports to aid cooperation

China is preparing to export more bullet trains and rail technologies, especially to countries along the routes of the Belt and Road, in a bid to strengthen international production capacity cooperation.

The majority of countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road are currently either planning to build high-speed rail lines or upgrade their existing railway systems to improve regional connectivity.

They are exploring the possibility of acquiring technological support from Chinese rail companies that hold proprietary intellectual property rights and diverse core technologies, ranging from design, construction, equipment, management and system integration.

Among the many positive outcomes of the move is that China's bullet train projects in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, an important trading partner of China in the initiative, have effectively helped boost local economic development.

Construction began on the first high-speed train link in Indonesia at the beginning of the year.

The building work was carried out by PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China, a joint venture between a consortium of Indonesian State-owned companies and China Railway International Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China Railway Corp.

The 150-kilometer route linking Jakarta and Bandung is scheduled to be completed in 2019, with a total investment of $5.5 billion.

"China's first high-speed rail project in Indonesia will spur the interest of more countries that are keen to put their economic growth on a firmer footing through efficient transportation systems and regional connectivity," said Wang Mengshu, deputy chief engineer of China Railway Tunnel Group Ltd.

Ridwan Kamil, mayor of Bandung, commented that the project was expected to create about 40,000 new jobs annually.

Russia's high-speed Moscow-Kazan railway is also under construction, with bullet trains supplied by the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation, the country's largest train maker by revenue.

Scheduled for completion by 2018, the 770-km line will run through seven Russian regions with a total population of more than 25 million.

In addition, China Railway Construction Corp rebuilt the 1,344-kilometer Benguela Railway, which opened in February last year. Traversing Angola, it is the second-longest railway a Chinese company has constructed in Africa, after the Tanzania-Zambia line that was built in the 1970s.

Roughly 99 percent of the materials for the project such as screws, steel, cement and communication equipment were purchased from China.

"In order to successfully realize the aims of the country's Belt and Road Initiative, CRCC has expanded its scientific and technological innovation input and explored a new mode of patent operation," Han Fengxian, chief engineer of the company, told China Intellectual Property News.

CRCC filed its first patent application in 1994 and started to implement its innovation and patent integration strategy in 2010. It has now established a core patent pool in the railway sector.

Taking the large track maintenance machine for example, CRCC has developed a series of patented products based on technological gaps in the sector after analyzing more than 20,000 Chinese and foreign patent documents.

It filed nearly 160 patent applications, including 67 for invention patents.

China, however, still lags behind a number of foreign countries in terms of the number of railway-related patents owned and has not yet established a sizable overseas patent layout, Han said.

Chinese rail companies need to focus more on risk control and patent layout, as well as patent licensing, transfer, investment and financing, he added.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/22/2016 page5)