China in talks to sell high-speed trains to U.S.

China's is a good choice, since it integrates the world's best technologies. The Chinese can thank our multinational companies, which handed them our technologies for free, on a plate, including ones that taxpayers in Japan and the West funded for development.

That's globalization for you.

The article makes several wrong statements. High speed rail projects have not "fallen by the wayside" by and large. Several years ago, President Obama was able to include about 10 billion dollars for high speed rail in an economic stimulus package. That money has gone to projects in Virginia, North Carolina, Western Massachusetts, Vermont, Michigan, Illinois, California, the Northeast Corridor, and the Pacific Northwest. Many of these projects are just getting underway now, viz. North Carolina's double tracking, curve straightening, and crossing elimination between Raleigh and Charlotte, Amtrak just started running through Western Mass on a refurbished direct route to Vermont and hopefully Montreal in the future, California's project just broke ground, Illinois's 110MPH between Chicago and St. Louis is still under construction. A portion of the stimulus money also went to preliminary/engineering studies in multiple states. We have heard these projects heralded, but so far they are in the study stage and once these studies are completed, they will constitute the Federally-required preliminaries for the projects. These projects, such as the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor from D.C. to Charlotte and Atlanta, have not "fallen by the wayside." They are still in the preliminary stage and will need to be funded in the future. By the way, I'm a conservative and fully stand for high-speed rail construction.

Don't buy it! The Chinese have had countless railway accidents and have never been known for very good engineering.

Well said, Christopher Love,

Perhaps a modest tax on gasoline could help fund these important infrastructure projects, and create jobs?

Japan helped china with its high speed rail and now japan is losing out to the cheap Chinese knock off, the Japanese have a 100% safety record since 1960's, china has already had some major accidents and their system has only been running a hand full of years, becareful who you choose.

Agree be warned.

I think the biggest rival for Japan will be a European system like the TGV or similar. Said that the Japanese are working on a shinkansen that can automatically adjust to variants in rail gauges.

"Japan helped china with its high speed rail...."

Yes, indeed. The Europeans and Canadians also. China basically told them to hand over their technology, otherwise Beijing would restrict their access to a billion person-market. That's the sad reality of "globalization."

The automakers are doing the same.

You'd think that the Chinese would build the best products since they copy from the best all over the world. You'd think that the Chinese would be masters of copying by now as it appears that's 95% of what they do. However, if we look closer at what the Chinese are actually better at, we soon see that's cutting corners to make profit and safety be damned in the process. I wouldn't get on anything Chinese made that I can't walk faster than.

Let's hold off on these high-speed trains until the rail companies in the US prove they can get a regular-speed train safely from point A to point B.