EU Wants Japan To Buy European Trains

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]AFP: EU Asks Japan To Open Up Rail Industry
France and the European Union called Friday on Japan to open up to foreign railway companies, saying Japanese firms were already allowed to do business in Europe. "We need reciprocity in the rail sector," French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said in Tokyo, where he was taking part in a conference on global warming. Japan's Shinkansen and France's TGV are among the fastest in the world, and both countries have aggressively marketed their industries overseas. Bussereau said that he and the E.U. transport commissioner, Antonio Tajani, urged in meetings in Tokyo that "the Japanese rail market not be closed to European industry at a moment when Europe is opening to Japan...There are already high-speed Japanese trains in Spain and recently, a British company bought Japanese rail carriages for the Eurostar to serve ... London, in particular the future Olympic station," Bussereau said. But he complained that France's Alstom, Germany's Siemens (SI) and the European arm of Canada's Bombardier were "almost absent on the Japanese market." He doubted Japan's explanation, presented to the World Trade Organization, that the absence was due to security standards on critical equipment. "Some people think that there is a bit of a broad interpretation of what is critical," Bussereau said...more...

[Buraku]

Ware Ware

not gonna work the EU is trying where the US has failed for years

They will learn the hard way the Japanese politicians are stubborn cunts

. Nihonjinron and Kokusaika - We Japanese and Internationalization
http://www.talisman.org/~erlkonig/japanese/general/newcomer-primer.html
Hypocrisy is something attacked in the West, but in Japan it is often standard procedure. Even today, when western nations ask Japan to open its markets (to the benefit of the whole Japanese population), many Japanese initially see it as an attack on the Japanese way of life and culture. Rice, the most heavily protected product in Japan, is the by far the biggest example of this. The agricultural unions cranked up their propaganda machines about how rice is the soul of Japan and how "unsafe" foreign rice is. And the Japanese people bought it hook, line and sinker. The current recession is testing this notion however, and due to GATT Japan has been forced to grant "minimum access" to foreign rice. The powerful yen also has sent many Japanese shopping overseas. Yet instead of wondering why Japan is so expensive, the typical reaction is how weird it is that other nations are so cheap. The term "Kokusaika" or "Internationalization" is another trendy buzzword being bounced around the country. Everyone is supposed to become more international these days. However, since the Japanese never bothered to define what exactly "international" is, it is just another vacuous idea. To many Japanese women being international is carrying a Louis Vuitton bag and drinking Budweiser.

[wuchan]

To many Japanese women being international is carrying a Louis Vuitton bag and drinking Budweiser.

:rofl:
I always found it funny that j-girls like it but american chicks call it budwater.

[bud is made from RICE!!!!!]

This is japan, they love monopolies. The lifetime employment system would never have worked without them. Too bad they banned that kind of stuff.............. until a few years ago.

[Tsuru]

As long as China and Korea keep buying them I really couldn't care less if Japan doesn't buy our TGVs and Maglevs.

[Kuang_Grade]

Alstom was complaining recently that they felt that China was stealing their rail tech and encroaching on their markets while keeping their market shut as well and this may be an additional warning to Japan they have much to lose as well if the market starts to become protectionist.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d7d9a190-d86e-11dd-bcc0-000077b07658.html

The issues are all the more acute because many European governments are investing heavily in their railways, for environmental reasons and to boost battered economies.
Europe's big three builders are unwilling to see orders for trains go to markets where they cannot export products back.

China's position gives particular grounds for concern because of suspicion many of its builders' designs draw heavily on technology transferred from Europe, North America or Japan.

Some appear to be using that technology to compete with those suppliers' home markets.
It seems likely there will be few further opportunities for outsiders to participate in the investment of at least $180bn in railways under way during China's 2006-10 five-year plan.

Mr Mellier says that, after designs are bought from Hitachi or Kawasaki of Japan - both of whom have supplied technology used in Japanese Shinkansen trains to China - or Bombardier, the technology is "made Chinese".

"They will use them, adapt them, aggregate them to [form] a Chinese technology based on foreign technology being leased by them," he says. "I sincerely believe that all the many tenders for rolling stock and signalling will be for Chinese companies and the access for non-Chinese companies will be kept to a bare minimum."

[sublight]

"Some people think that there is a bit of a broad interpretation of what is critical," Bussereau said

Wheels, for instance.