BEIJING, April 16 (AFP) – Once a gold mine for a select few foreign railway construction companies, China is now looking to compete with the global conglomerates that helped build its rail lines in the first place.

Chinese firms are already building high-speed rail links in Turkey and Venezuela, but the railways ministry has said it wants to export ''Chinese technology'' to North and South America as well as Europe.

In Saudi Arabia, the German giant Siemens is said to have forged an alliance with a Chinese consortium for a high-speed rail link between the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, after realizing it could lose the tender to the consortium.

The move highlights the emergence of Chinese firms as major players on the railway scene, helped along by government financial support.

Foreign companies are not just competing with individual Chinese firms, they are coming up against a Chinese government eager to develop its rail sector and pouring money into state firms to do it, said Ren Xianfang, analyst at IHS Global Insight.

But ''on a stand-alone basis, domestic firms in China are obviously still not in the same league as their overseas peers'', Ren said.

The vastness of China's own rail ambition is another asset. The government plans 120,000 kilometers (74,400 miles) of track by 2020 -- up from 86,000 kilometers now -- and more than 40 percent of it would be high-speed links.

In December, China inaugurated the fastest high-speed railway in the world between Wuhan in the center of the country and southern Guangzhou.

Thanks to foreign technology transfers, its average speed is 350 kilometers an hour.

''In a few years, half of the world's high-speed mileage will be in China,'' said Frederic Campagnac, founder of consulting firm Clevy China, which specializes in the transport and construction
sectors.

''They are also building the most rolling stock at the moment,'' a sector that is ''not entirely automated and requires a qualified workforce. China is acquiring know-how fast,'' he said.

However, according to a source working for a European railway firm who asked not to be named, the Chinese ''still need foreigners for high-speed railways'.'

In Chinese-foreign teams such as the alliance in Saudi Arabia, ''one can imagine that China brings low-cost production for mechanical parts, and Siemens contributes high-technology and the high-end image'', the source said.

''For the moment, we're in a classic pattern -- the Chinese copy what is easy to copy but can't manage to master the overall system.''