He is not talking about 1980s communist-era trains, he is talking about HSR which was "technology-transferred" wholesale from Japanese and German companies under small-series licensing deals, then eerily similar trains were manufactured en masse locally.
If you have traveled in a Shinkansen in Japan and then been on Chinese HSR, you can see that the HSR interiors are almost identical copies of the Japanese equivalents.
However the key part that China cannot copy from Japan is the human software part, that is the training and service excellence of 50 years of history with hundreds of millions of passenger kilometers of operational history and zero passenger fatalities during operation.
China's HSR has already had multiple fatalities during operation, unfortunately.
However the key part that China cannot copy from Japan is the human software part, that is the training and service excellence of 50 years of history with hundreds of millions of passenger kilometers of operational history and zero passenger fatalities during operation.
China's HSR has already had multiple fatalities during operation, unfortunately.