Shin-kansen: Japanese High-Speed Trains!

"The oldest and busiest Shinkansen corridor - Central Japan Railway's 550km Tokaido line, which connects Tokyo with the western city of Osaka - carries 400,000 passengers a day and has run since 1964 without a fatal accident. The average delay last year was 36 seconds, with most of that caused by typhoons."

The Financial Times talks about the Japanese Shin-kansen in "Tokyo bites hte bullet on Shinkansen" here becoming available to the world after close to five decades in use.  Great competition for the likes of Chinese and German train manufacturers.

China replaces Germany to become world's largest exporter

Via Tony Tsai - "China replaces Germany to become world's largest exporter; US experts: Chinese companies are not powerful on their own:  China has replaced Germany to become the world's largest exporter in 2009, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing data from Global Trade Information Services. Scott Kennedy, a China expert and political scientist at Indiana University, says that the high volume of China's exports "is not speaking to how important and powerful Chinese companies are on their own" because 60% of China's exports were generated from foreign-controlled enterprises. [ifeng.com, 2010.01.06]"