If you can read Mandarin, one of the things you can see on the blogs in China is that these things are so cheap to manufacture that it costs more to steal them!

The Mag-Lev from Pudong Airport cost what ... 1.5 Billion. It only goes about 20 miles into Shanghai. They are getting 80 of these trains for 4 Billion.

Stealing a new fangled industrial adhesive might be profitable, and useful in your construction projects. But if you are going to build it the regular way . . .

it just doesn't pay to steal a nail.

Construction will happen in China (Qingdao), with project management and components(?) split between China and Europe offices.

And not that funny; I know of heavy manufacturing companies that multiply their selling prices by 10 for equipment that is destined for China just for that reason.

Thereby giving the Chinese a great incentive to copy them, after all they're being ripped off.

That's pretty much analogous to people copying music because they've been ripped off for so long.

Apologies for not being clearer. I believe that they agreed to this co-development project because they are getting a good deal; as in, no being charged 10x because they're chinese.

They will have ample opportunity for the technology transfer required to do the next 800 on their own. And Bombardier will have their opportunity to compete on the next project. But the pessimist in me also believes that Bombardier will do their best to prevent that technology transfer! Sad, but it seems to be the path of least resistance in business these days.

Ah ok, I misread you completely. Too late to edit now, but thanks for the clarification.

Apologies for not being clearer. I believe that they agreed to the co-development

They tend to do that in a more subtle way:

Bombardier Transportation announced today that its Chinese joint venture, Bombardier Sifang (Qingdao) Transportation Ltd., has been selected by the Chinese Ministry of Railways ...

I imagine that the cars will be manufactured in China and the joint venture company will gain a lot of experience from the effort.

i wont be surprised if 80 is "few" for China as they might be planning to have 800 trains in next 10 or 20 years (its a huge country - geographically ) ... who knows?

Who's going to buy the copies though?