Chinese high speed train technology

Technology: Chinese Intellectual Property Acquisition Tactics Exposed
"In an interview published in Sina.com.cn, Chinese rail engineers gave a detailed account of the history, motivation, and technologies behind the Chinese high-speed rail system. More interestingly, they blatantly revealed the strategies and tactics used in acquiring high-speed rail tech from foreign companies (Google translation of Chinese original). At the beginning, China developed its own high-speed rail system known as the Chinese Star, which achieved a test speed of 320km/h; but the system was not considered reliable or stable enough for operation. So China decided to import the technologies. The leaders instructed, 'The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs.' A key strategy employed is divide-and-conquer: by dividing up the technologies of the system and importing multiple different technologies across different companies, it ensures no single country or company has total control. 'What we do is to exchange market for technologies. The negotiation was led by the Ministry of Railway [against industry alliances of the exporting countries]. This uniform executive power gave China huge advantage in negotiations,' said Wu Junrong, 'If we don't give in, they have no choice. They all want a piece of our huge high speed rail project.' For example, [Chinese locomotive train] CRH2 is based on Japanese tech, CRH3 on German tech, and CRH5 on French tech, all retrofit for Chinese rail standards. Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contain more and more Chinese made parts."

SlashDot

They stole a little bit from every one and then offered the victims a slice of the pie if they shut up and went along with it. It isn't paranoia if they really are out to get you. I'm starting to think that the Chinese have it right. Suppress your own people, take advantage of other societies who do not oppress their own people to sell them everything that you can. Steel all the technology you can until you are caught up. Then hold your own markets hostage and threaten the rest of the world with giving their competition all the access if they don't give in and hand you everything you want. Sounds like a plan to me.