A six-company Japanese consortium plans to bid on a Chinese project to double the speed of trains on five major existing railway lines to 200 kilometers per hour, the group said in Tokyo Thursday.

The contract value of the project covering the five lines stretching over a total of 2,000 km is estimated at around 100 billion yen (about 893 million US dollars).

The six companies -- Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Itochu Corp., Mitsubishi Corp. and Marubeni Corp. -- plan to offer a modified version Shinkansen bullet train, which can run at a top speed of 275 kph.

The Japanese group is set to compete against Siemens AG of Germany for the Chinese order.

According to the consortium, if the bid proves successful, it would mark the first major transfer of Japan's Shinkansen technology to China.

The five train lines will include one linking Beijing and Shenyang in the province of Liaoning, and another to connect Qingdao in the coastal province of Shandong with Jinan in the sameprovince.

Source: Xinhua