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China on a train & plane buying spree

China signed contracts for the purchase of 60 high speed trains from Siemens, and 70 Boeing ariplanes over the past days. The first 3 trains from Siemens will be imported, the remaining 57 will be built in China. This gives China plenty of opportunity to learn how to produce these trains themselves. The vice minister of railways does not even try to hide that by saying (quote from the Shanghai Daily):” It’s a small part of the construction of China’s high-speed railway. China will design and build its own 300-kilometers-an hour trains later.” China is still investing heavily in its overcrowded railway system.Over the next 15 years a total of 28,000 km of railway will be built. The total investment will be about 200 billion EUR, and this is more than China can currenlty afford.

The Boeing planes are all 737’s and they will all be imported. China has bought 534 Boeing airplanes over the past 20 years, the other major supplier is Airbus. For the next 20 years Chinese airlines plan to purchase an additional 2600 airplanes (but not all Boeing). As a comparison, currently China has about 800 airplanes, this will quadruple to about 3200 airplanes by 2025. It seems China is preparing itself for continuous high growth.

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