Mr Philippe Mellier, CEO of Alstom Transport, the second manufacturer (after Bombardier Transportation) of high-speed trains, locomotives and metro cars, is calling on countries for a boycot of Chinese trains according to the Financial Times, here. In an interview Mr Mellier said that
- China was closing its domestic market;
- Chinese companies export trains that use foreign technologies.
The Associated Press said that the Financial Times suggested that these exports could be in violation of licensing agreements. Read here.
The spokesman of China’s railway ministry Mr Wang Yongping has denied the allegations.
Mr Wang said that that Chinese companies paid foreign firms money for learning how to develop trains with average speeds of 300 kilometers per hour, but that China’s new generation of high-speed trains which travel at 350 kilometers per hour were completely homegrown.
“This is the innovative results of our wholly owned intellectual property and there’s no stealing of Western technology, ” Mr Wang said according to Associated Press, read here.
France24’s Owen Fairclough talks about it here in English: Don’t buy Chinese trains, says Alstom Transport boss and his colleague Sébastien le Belzic in French, Alstom prône le boycott des trains “made in China”.
Siemens, the number three high-spreed train manufacturer, has also problems with China,
