BEIJING (Kyodo) Japanese, French and Canadian companies, along with Chinese partners, have submitted bids to China's Railways Ministry to supply new train cars for a project to upgrade five rail routes, industry sources said late Wednesday.
The ministry has begun screening the tenders, which might have an impact on who will win a bid for a high-speed rail project linking Beijing and Shanghai.
Six Japanese firms, including Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., Hitachi Ltd. and Mitsubishi Corp., teamed up with China's CSR Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co. for one of the bids, the sources said.
French industrial giant Alstom and Canadian airplane and train maker Bombardier each tied up with Chinese firms to join the bidding, they said.
The Japanese-Chinese consortium bid about 420 billion yen for the contract, the French-Chinese bid was about 540 billion yen and the Canadian-Chinese tender was about 380 billion yen, they said.
The bids are for railway cars to be used in the project to upgrade the train speed on the five routes to 200 kph.
The routes, totaling about 2,000 km, include those linking Beijing and Shenyang and Jinan and Qingdao.