BEIJING - Chinese companies plan to bid for contracts of building high-speed railways in the United States as China is willing to share its advanced technologies, a senior official said on Saturday.

"We have organized related companies to take part in bidding, and we have signed memorandum of cooperation with the railway authority in California,"said Wang Zhiguo, vice-minister of railways on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress, the nation's top legislature.

US President Barack Obama pledged in January to spend $8 billion for rail projects including the high-speed systems in California, Florida and Illinois.

China currently has about 3,300 kilometers of operational high-speed railways, the world's longest, on which bullet trains gallop at an average speed of 350 kmph, and it plans to expand the network to 13,000 kilometers by 2012, according to the Ministry of Railways (MOR).

During Obama's visit to China last November, MOR signed a memorandum of strategic cooperation with the General Electric Company on technology research.
                                                                                                             Source: Xinhua