The Chinese government plans to invest 650 billion yuan (103.56 billion U.S. dollars) in railway construction this year, nearly equivalent to the amount spent last year.

New railways with a combined length of 5,200 km will go into operation this year as well, Minister of Railways Sheng Guangzu said at a Thursday work meeting.

Although the amount is slightly up from the 630.98 billion yuan spent in 2012, it is significantly down from 2010's record investment of 842.65 billion yuan, data from the ministry showed.

The ministry will diversify financing channels by encouraging local governments, enterprises and private investors to participate in railway construction, Sheng said.

A national railway development fund will be established as an investment platform for social and private capital, the minister said.

To attract private capital, the ministry vowed to offer fair treatment for private railway investors in a guideline issued last May.

By 2015, China will have around 120,000 km of railways in operation, including 18,000 km of high-speed railways and an express railway network totaling 40,000 km in length, according to the 12th five-year plan for railway development.

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.

Currently the State Intellectual Property Office has granted more than 900 patents related to high-speed railway.

"China's high-speed railway technology should not be subjected to groundless accusations from abroad," he said.

Tian said the State Intellectual Property Office has coordinated related departments to provide legal services for China's companies to protect their intellectual rights outside China. For example, the office opened a helpline, 12330, to provide legal advice to companies.

"Chinese companies should accumulate more experience in protecting their own intellectual property rights and in dealing with overseas lawsuits, and we encourage the companies to apply for patents outside China," Tian said.

According to the latest statistics released by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the total number of patents approved in China increased 34.6 percent in 2011 from the previous year.

However, Huang Xiantao, an expert on intellectual property rights at the China International Association for Urban and Rural Development, said China's high-speed railway patents are far from enough.

"The companies should apply for overseas patents for all the high-speed railway technologies we developed, so that China will have an advantage in world competition," Huang said.

Currently, companies tend to apply for more patents inside China rather than in the US, Europe and Japan.

"On the other hand, when you develop a new technology, you can apply for numerous patents on the basis of the technology. But most of China's companies do not recognize this, so they just apply for patents for the technology itself, but neglect other patents based on the technology," he said.

As for groundless accusations from overseas, Huang said China's railway authority should use media to refute false accusations, and seek legal help to crack those cases that stain the image of China's high-speed railway.

Fears over intellectual property rights will not derail China's exports of bullet trains, as the technology is home-grown, the vice-minister of science and technology said as he dismissed as "nonsense" copycat claims by a Japanese company.

The country had developed its own version of high-speed technology through years of innovation, Cao Jianlin said in an exclusive interview.

Cao also encouraged Chinese companies to file for patents overseas.

China's high-speed rail industry has been booming since 2004, and Cao said the sector "will further research patent strategy and the global IPR situation to better understand the laws and policies of countries they export to".

His comments come after Kawasaki Heavy Industries suggested China had not developed its own high-speed technology.

The Japanese company teamed up with CSR Sifang, which then produced China's bullet trains after the Ministry of Railways launched a bidding process to build a high-speed network. Purchasing contracts and technology transfer agreements were signed with Chinese counterparts.

Other global companies, such as Siemens of Germany, Alstom of France and Canada's Bombardier, also signed the contracts and agreements.

"China says it owns exclusive rights to that intellectual property, but Kawasaki and other foreign companies feel otherwise," the Japanese company said in a statement quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

The statement added that Kawasaki was looking to solve the issue through talks.

"We did buy trains that could travel at 200 kilometers per hour from Kawasaki, but the purchase was based on legitimate contracts," Cao said.

"Chinese companies paid technology transfer fees according to the contracts, so it is nonsense to accuse China of copying their technology."

Kawasaki constructed the Shinkansen, Japan's bullet train. However, like other manufacturers, a drop in global demand prompted the company to look at overseas markets.

"If Kawasaki really believes China copied its Shinkansen technology, it should have sued the Chinese companies, instead of complaining to the media," Cao said. "Maybe the company did not expect China's high-speed railway to grow so quickly, making the country a world leader."

Based on the transferred knowledge, China's scientists developed a wide range of technologies, including system integration and component parts, the vice-minister said.

Before 2005, China had few patents relating to high-speed trains. The numbers soon started to increase and in the first half of 2012, 163 patents were registered in China. Of these patents, 90 percent were held by Chinese companies with German, Japanese, French and US companies making up most of the balance, according to Cao.

The Ministry of Science and Technology also carried out high-speed technology innovation. For example, the ministry arranged a group of research projects. The projects attracted 2.2 billion yuan ($350 million) in government investment and more than 5 billion yuan from the business sector.

"The sci-tech projects helped us to build independent intellectual property rights," Cao said. Chinese companies are producing three 350 km/h trains, and the goal is to link the high-speed network with lower-speed trains, for example elevated trains, traveling inside a city. "This could change people's way of life," Cao said.

It is feasible that people could live and work in different cities, Cao said. "A dynamic economy needs greater public mobility."

On Dec 26, a new high-speed rail line opened linking Beijing and Guangzhou, but the ticket prices raised a few eyebrows.

Prices for the 2,298 km journey ranged from 865 yuan to 2,727 yuan for the 8-hour trip.

"We have to admit that the ticket price is too high for most people," Cao said. "But we should also be aware that there are some people who are willing to pay the high price to save more time.

"That is the reason we construct high-speed railways - to save time for people who would like to pay more."

BEIJING: A subway train derailed Tuesday in a test run on a new line in southwestern China, killing one driver and injuring another, state media reported.

The first carriage of the train ran off the tracks in the city of Kunming in Yunnan province at 9:09 am (0109 GMT), the China News Service said. There were no passengers on board.

One driver was struck by falling heating equipment in the driver's cabin and died, while another was slightly injured and taken to hospital, the report said, citing the subway's operator, state-owned Kunming Rail Transit Co.

The city government was investigating the cause of the accident, it added.

Chinese authorities have long been accused of compromising safety in their rush to develop the country's vast transport network.

Two metro trains in Shanghai collided in September 2011, injuring 284 people, just months after a deadly high-speed rail crash in the eastern city of Wenzhou killed at least 40 in China's worst railway accident since 2008.

Chinese state-owned contractor China Railway Construction has been awarded contracts worth a total of CNY 13.4 billion (US$ 2.2 billion) for railway electrification, railway construction and road building projects in China.

The company won a contract to construct a 53 km section of the planned 362 km high-speed rail line connecting the cities of Zhengzhou in Henan province, north-central China, and Xuzhou in Jiangsu to the north-east of the country, with a bid of CNY 3.6 billion (US$ 572 million). The Zhengzhou to Xuzhou rail line is scheduled for completion by the end of 2016.

It also won another bid to install electrification systems for a section of Lanxin Railway in north-western China – a CNY 5.2 billion (US$ 835 million) contract that also included the reconstruction of Xining railway station in Qinghia province, and the construction of a second double line of rail track at Lanzhou pivot railway hub in Gansy Provice, north-west China.

In the roads sector, China Railway won a CNY 2.3 billion (US$ 369 million) contract for the construction of section B of the Maliuwan-Zhaotong section of Chongqing–Kunming Highway in Yunnan province as well as separate contract worth CNY 2.5 billion (US$ 402 million) for the construction of section C of the Maliuwan-Zhaotong Section of Chongqing–Kunming Highway .

The sale of standing-room-only rail tickets will be phased out in the coming years as China's rail transportation capacity improves, the Beijing Morning Post reports.

Wang Mengshu, a railways expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said during an online interview that standing-room-only tickets were currently sold only because of the current strains on railway capacity. He added that the tickets would be phased out as China's rail transport capacity improved.

Wang said standing-room-only tickets also posed safety hazards to train operations.

The Ministry of Railways raised the issue in response to previous discussions, saying if the trains offered half-price discounts on standing-room-only tickets, it would cause overcrowdedness. As a result, the rail service only sells a limited number of such tickets.

A recent online survey indicates that more than 90 percent of about 930,000 netizens have shown support for half-price discounts on standing-room-only train tickets.

China will build around 5,210 kilometres of high speed railways in 2013 according to the Ministry of Railways. 

At this pace it would be 2,740km more than built in 2012.

Interestingly, over 50 per cent of the trains to be built will operate on 200km an hour speed lines.

Large orders for trains were placed by the Ministry of Railways of $16 billion in 2009 for high speed trains.

Beijing's subway system marked its 42nd year of operation on Tuesday, celebrating four decades of expansion that have made it the second-longest subway in the world.

Beijing's subway system is expected to carry approximately 10 million passengers daily in 2013, surpassing the world's busiest subway in Moscow, which transports 9 million passengers daily, according to Beijing's transportation department.

Built in the 1960s, the first stretch of Beijing's subway was initially used for national defense. The subway line began to allow civilian passengers on Jan 15, 1971.

The subway system now consists of 16 lines that transport 8.7 million passengers daily. The recent opening of four new lines has increased the length of the transit system to 442 km.

Jia Peng, spokesman for the Beijing Subway Operation Company, said the expansion of the network has called for an improved scheduling system, regular maintenance of subway equipment and improved personnel training.

The speed and density of the subway's construction are unparalleled in history, said Hao Weiya, vice general manager of Beijing Infrastructure Investment Co. Ltd.

Beijing's subway lines are expected to surpass 700 km in length by 2015, Hao said, adding that they will be built with an investment of 500 billion yuan.

China's urban transit has entered a period of rapid development, said Gao Yucai, director of the Urban Rail Transportation Commission under the China Communications and Transportation Association (CCTA).

Forty Chinese cities are expected to have their own subway networks by 2020, with a combined length of more than 7,000 km, Gao said.

Although the development of subway transit has brought a great deal of convenience to Chinese urbanites, accidents in recent years have led to calls for strengthened security and maintenance.

One boy died and 30 others were injured when a rising escalator collapsed on Beijing's Line 4 subway in July 2011.

BEIJING –– Rapid growth in construction of urban rail systems in China is forecast to continue this year following government approval of nearly 1 trillion yuan ($160 billion) of investments in urban rail plans, according to a report on the China Daily.

The construction boom in the industry, however, is causing concern among some experts over the financial risks it can pose to local governments, the report said.

Some 360 billion yuan worth of projects that have passed feasibility studies are now ready to begin construction, China Daily said, citing the National Development and Reform Commission.

The commission approved 25 subway projects in 18 cities with a total investment of more than 800 billion yuan, the report said.

Two months later, the NDRC cleared urban rail plans for four other cities — Beijing, Nanchang, Fuzhou and Urumqi — with a total investment of 135 billion yuan.

The report said 35 cities in China were building subways last year, with an estimated investment of 260 billion yuan, the newspaper cited a report of the NDRC’s Comprehensive Transport Research Institute.

Four subway lines in Beijing opened in December, bringing the length of its subway lines to 442 kilometers.

In Hubei province, the first subway of the capital Wuhan opened on Dec 28. The 27-km system, built at a cost of more than 15 billion yuan, is the first subway in Central China, according to the report.

China Daily cited the subway operator, Wuhan Metro, as saying on Tuesday that nine more subway lines will be built this year with an investment of at least 16 billion yuan.

Development or expansion of subway lines are also under way in many other second- and third-tier cities including Changsha and Kunming, the newspaper said.

China Daily said another 24 cities will open new subway lines this year, citing the Comprehensive Transport Research Institute.

“With surging costs in building and operating subways, many smaller cities waiting to get approval for subway construction will simply not be able to afford to operate them even if they are completed,” the report quoted Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Although subways can help reduce traffic volume on city roads and ease congestion, rapidly increasing construction costs have made them harder to afford, Wang said.

“One kilometer of subway can cost as much as 700 million yuan to 1 billion yuan now,” Wang said. “Besides, operating costs are increasing. This has put a heavy financial burden on many local governments, who borrowed the money to build subways.”

Tang Liming, a researcher with Anbound, a Beijing-based consultancy firm, said: “Most subways in China are operating with deficits.

“Even subway Line 4 of Beijing, operated by Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway, needs a heavy subsidy from the municipal government,” Tang was quoted as saying in the report.

China Daily cited Chen Xunru, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, as saying last March that most of the investment for subways came from the government and bank loans.

The Ammonia and liquefied gas tank body, designed and manufactured by CNR Ji’nan Railway Vehicles Equipment Co., Ltd., has been passed the type approval by a French certification company. It shows the design and prototype samples are comply with the TPED of EU criteria and also meet RID requirements. This is the first report issued by EU authorized company to a Chinese enterprise for the railway transportation pressure vessel. CNR Ji’nan Railway Vehicles Equipment Co., Ltd. has the qualification to export Ammonia and liquefied gas tank body in 27 EU countries and also has the qualification to export products to 45 RID signatory countries.

The first 81.1meter-long electric-driven river transport ship researched and developed by CNR Yongji Xinshisu Electric Equipment Co., Ltd. in China has been trials successfully. This ship is manufactured and completed by Wuhan Waterway Shipyard and passed the CCS shakedown test in Wuhan section of the Yangtze River.

CRH380B high cold climate EMU, independently researched and manufactured by CNR Changchun Vehicle Equipment Co., Ltd, is officially unveiled on Harbin-Dalian line on December 1, 2012.
The 921-kilometer line links Harbin, capital of China's northernmost province of Heilongjiang, and the port city of Dalian in Liaoning province. The high-tech train, designed to withstand temperatures ranging from minus 40 up to 40 ℃, marks a new milestone in the country's effort to build the largest high-speed railway network in the world.