The race to win the contract for the high-speed rail link between the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai has entered the home stretch, with Japan ready to pull out all the stops to beat its German and French rivals.
Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Chikage Ogi will make a four-day visit to China from Sunday to pitch Japan's bullet train system for the planned 1,300-km line, construction of which is expected to start early next year.
But while the government sees it as an opportunity to forge lasting ties with China and a springboard to make the bullet train format the de facto standard for Asia, the private sector is determined that it should not end up simply as a goodwill gift of state-of-the-art technology.