China's new industrial revolution

China will soon have more high-speed railway tracks than the rest of the world put together

In its race to provide future growth, the speed at which China is adopting new technologies is breathtaking.

Take one example: high speed rail.

Five years ago, there was not a single kilometre of high speed track in China. Today, it has more than Europe and by 2012, it will have more than the rest of the world put together.

A vast, spotless factory in the port city of Qingdao is in the front line of this new industrial revolution.

It is here that the giant state-controlled train-making company CSR developed a Chinese high-speed train.

China's leaders "played a strong role in making all of this happen", says CSR's chairman, Xiaogang Zhao.

Foreign know-how

China's leaders started by demanding that any foreign company bidding for a part of the massive proposed high-speed programme to share its technology with a Chinese partner.

The Japanese engineering giant Kawasaki accepted this condition. A pioneer of high-speed rail, with almost half a century of development to its name, Kawasaki agreed to share its knowledge with CSR.

Siemens of Germany struck a similar deal with another Chinese train-maker.

With access to foreign know-how secured, the government then provided an army of 10,000 engineers and academics to create a Chinese train, Mr Zhao explains.

They did it, he says, in less than three years.

New train

Inside the Qingdao factory, senior engineer Ding Sansan explains how every aspect of the Japanese train had to be redesigned for the faster 350 kilometres per hour running speed that China's high-speed strategy demanded.

Everyone worked so hard on the project that he can hardly remember his last holiday.

"It was a very big challenge", he says.

And it is just the beginning.

Mr Ding is now working on a new train, due to be tested next year at an astonishing 500 kilometres per hour.

Unacceptable condition

Having acquired the technology, China is already exporting it.

This year, CSR supplanted Siemens as lead contractor on a new 440 kilometre high-speed line in Saudi Arabia.

Outside China, the speed at which such leading-edge technologies are being adopted is causing concern.

But China now plans to go one step further.

Under a new proposal, "indigenous innovation", foreign companies bidding for Chinese government contracts will not only have to share existing know-how.

They will also be required to conduct any new research and development work in China.

For some companies this will prove an unacceptable condition, according to Brenda Foster, head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

"It will keep American companies from being able to compete in the Chinese domestic market," she says.

"For some companies, that could actually put them out of business." .......

BBC