By Liu Dong and Gao Xiaohui
Chinese high-speed railway programs have always put passenger safety as the utmost priority and their design and construction are typically of import-based innovation, Chinese analysts said Tuesday, rebutting accusations of tech-theft and safety compromises.
"In Chinese high-speed railways' construction, China obtained core technology through legitimate technical contracts worth billions of dollars, and made a large number of improvements adaptable to China-specific situations and registered hundreds of patents before the completion of projects," Wang Mengshu, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told the Global Times, refuting allegations of technical "theft" by a Japanese industrialist.
The big temperature differences in China pose great challenges to Chinese railway development, which spurred technical breakthroughs one by one in high-speed rail building and made our technology superior to others in many respects, according to Wang.
The chairman of Central Japan Railway (JR Central), the operator of Japan's oldest and busiest bullet-train link, accused China of growing its high-speed rails by "stealing" foreign technology in overseas bidding and compromising safety, in an interview with the Financial Times Tuesday.
Chinese fast-developing rail technology has drawn favors from many nations, including the US, which has earmarked $8 billion for rail development.
Competition is intense in a proposed link between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, which has drawn interest from both China and JR Central, the Financial Times added.
"As to the speed limit, Chinese locomotives have the maximum capacity to run at 350 kilometers per hour, which does not necessarily mean the trains running at that speed all the time. This is common sense," Wang noted. "Passenger safety is always the top priority in Chinese rail development."
"China has been progressing at a relatively fast rate, and advanced nations should face a reality that developing coun-tries could overtake in certain domains," Geng Xin, deputy director of the JCC New Japan Research Institute, said.