Hundreds of Chinese exhibitors are attending this year's InnoTrans, including the world's largest railway transportation supplier CRRC, and tech giants like Huawei. As Chinese exhibitors' aim at overseas expansion, there's still a long way to go.

The Beijing to Shanghai bullet train. Top speed: 300 kilometers an hour. Journey time: less than 5 hours. This is the Chinese firm behind it — their eventual vision is worldwide passenger travel — to compete with long-haul flights. But even they admit the only way to export their products right now — is to adapt to a highly regionalised marketplace.

“We must meet the specific requirements of our customer — no matter if it’s technical requirements or special operational conditions: high temperatures, or low temperatures, or different maintenance conditions," said Chen Dayong, China Railway Rolling Stock Corp., LTD.

Disconnected networks — with different systems - make their dream … complicated.

A direct train journey from - say - Berlin to Beijing would involve changing the entire wheel base at least twice, installing software that could navigate multiple rules and regulations in different countries, and in numerous languages.

An international standard for rail transport is a long way off, and remains a major challenge for a sector that's fighting to remain competitive.

Many here see progress on that front as a priority. For Chinese firms, there’s a specific need — as the country embarks on an ambitious “Silk Road” strategic corridor — aiming to link Asia to Europe.

“The world standards association is trying to do this — to integrate standards all over the world," said Guo Chunlei, China Railway Construction Corporation LTD..

"But now, China has an open mind to adapt to current regional standards — and to gradually join different standards together: so that the world has the same standards. That will be a good time for construction of longer-haul lines”.

As trains become smarter — they also need data. Sharing between countries and regions is proving yet another obstacle.

“It’s relatively far away because you need the data from the trains for example — and every manufacturer, every train locomotive, every high speed train, send different data," said Annika Hauptvogel, Siemens AG.

"And you need the interfaces and they’re not standardised. So that’s a problem because the data is the basis for all the, digital services.”

For those afraid of flying — perhaps don’t get too excited.