and if it fail, what then? do you want to end up like the Indians with their "indigenous defense programs" such as the Arjunk mbt or Insas rifle or LCA that wasted billions of dollars, years of works and go no where. As the article mentioned, the China star has problems. Maybe if China spend more money on it, they can solve it as you suggested, but no one can guarantee it. Meanwhile China badly need the highspeed train to support the economy. By buying the tech from abroad, China can make her own highspeed train now, and expanding the highspeed train network to become the biggest one in the world today. So I don't see anything wrong with taking the safe and fastest way, albeit a more expensive ones to get there.