Following the opening of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway and the signing of an order by Serbia, another country has expressed its hope to start building a high-speed railway connecting China by 2030. The order was signed in 2010, but there is no news so far, and the light rail built by the China Railway Sixth Bureau in the capital Hanoi was put into operation as early as three years ago, which also shows China's reliability, so now Vietnam has figured it out and said that it wants to "learn from China". But there is one country that is not so lucky, not only giving up the sincere price given by China's high-speed rail, but also letting its own project fail, which is Bulgaria, a small European country.
As a country with a land area of 111,000 square meters, Bulgaria has long set its sights on high-speed rail, a project that benefits the country and the people. At that time, China's high-speed rail was involved in the bidding, and the price offered by the Chinese side at the time was 610 million euros, combined with the number of 20 trains and the subsequent 15 years of maintenance and training. This is of course cheap, which is 46.7% lower than the estimated cost of Bulgarian Railways, and 47.5% lower than the bidding rival Spain.
Of course, this price is because our manufacturing industry is developed and experienced, you know, China's high-speed rail operating mileage is as high as 45,000 kilometers, ranking first in the world. It stands to reason that such experience and prices should be stable, but who knows, the EU began to intervene, saying that the price is so low because our government subsidizes it, not fair competition. As an EU country, Bulgaria did not dare to go against the EU, and the EU also conducted a countervailing investigation against Chinese companies, and the final result was that we were forced to withdraw from the project, and the Spanish company finally won the bid and won the project at a price nearly twice as high as ours.
But after winning the project, the Spanish company found that the job was not easy to do. Internally, there are frequent changes of senior management in the project, and everyone wants to get a piece of the pie. The key technologies required for the project belonged to different suppliers, and the process of equipment installation was very slow due to poor coordination. Externally, Bulgaria added a new policy that required additional safety measures for the railway project, which came and went, increased costs, and finally after 33 months, the Spanish Talgo could not be delivered, in the words of the media, "Bulgaria canceled its largest recovery plan tender".
In fact, the Spanish company Talgo is not a parallel import, and their high-speed train technology is also well-known internationally. Deutsche Bahn, for example, bought 56 ICE L-shaped high-speed trains last year. But on the Bulgarian project, they really didn't do it well enough, so much so that they ended up smashing the signboard. It is worth mentioning that a Hungarian company is preparing to buy it, and although the Spanish government is trying to block it, Talgo is very willing to sell. According to Spanish media reports, the Hungarian company may be linked to Russia. As for whether Russia intervened, it is not clear.
In general, the failure of the Bulgarian project is actually related to political interests. In the EU, there is not much right to speak, and it is naturally impossible for Bulgaria to take EU subsidies and act against the EU at the same time. Now their consequences have appeared, and with the Belt and Road Initiative, more countries have seen the strength of China's high-speed rail. With technology, I believe that in the future in the international market, our road will only go wider and farther!