The fatal train collision near Shanghai at the weekend may add to the challenges China faces as it plans to become a global force in high speed railway technology.

In Russia, where Beijing is angling for contracts to build high speed railways, officials had misgivings about alleged Chinese abuse of intellectual property rights even before the crash.

Russian Railways, the state rail monopoly, plans to tender late this year for the construction of a €12bn – to €15bn high speed railway line between Moscow and St Petersburg, the biggest infrastructure projects ever undertaken in Russia.

China is expected to put up strong competition against other bidders including German, French and South Korean groups, says Denis Muratov, chief executive of Russian Railways’ High Speed Rail Lines subsidiary. “China can outbid any offer. They have no problem with finding any kind of money.”

However, reservations about intellectual property rights will likely deter Russia from handing China all the contracts.

“Of course we would like the project to be done cheaply. But we might have questions about patents that have been creatively reworked in China… It would be best to divide the project up, ” says Mr Muratov.

Russia has watched with awe as China established the world’s longest high speed railway network in less than 7 years and used bullet trains to spur the development of its far flung regions.

In comparison, Russian Railways’ plans to develop high speed rail links that began when the company began buying bullet trains from Siemens, the Germany high technology group, in 2009, are modest.

Named Sapsan after the Russian peregrine falcon, the trains run between Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhny-Novgorod, whisking businessmen and tourists between the country’s biggest business and tourist hubs.

Although a commercial success, Sapsan has created problems on the railways crowding ordinary passenger and suburban trains off the network and forcing Russian Railways to invest in dedicated high speed lines.

The Moscow-St Petersburg link will be the start of a wide reaching high sped railway construction project that will eventually embrace at least ten Russian cities in the European part of the country. China sees Russia as a land bridge to Europe and has urged Russian Railways to extend the network further east to connect the two countries.

Siemens established a train manufacturing plant in China after winning a $1bn order for high speed trains in 2009.

Russia, which has so far taken delivery of eight Sapsans and plans to order a further 8 this year, has no plans to build bullet trains from scratch. So even if opportunities are less exciting than in China, at least foreign train manufacturers won’t have to worry about patent issues in Russia.