The train was put through its paces on Saturday on a 25-kilometer section of rail in southern Tainan county, Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) said in a statement.

The 345-kilometer (215-mile) bullet train service will link the capital Taipei with the island's second city of Kaohsiung in the south.

Test runs began earlier this year, and the system, with trains running at an average speed of 300 kilometers an hour, is expected to transport 100 million passengers a year.

The railway system will be managed by the THSRC for 35 years before it is turned over to state control under the terms of the build-operate-transfer project, the largest of its kind in the world.

The deal is also important for Japan as it marks the first export of the "bullet train" outside Japan.

THSRC announced earlier this month that commercial operations of the 13.5 billion US dollar bullet train system, originally slated to begin operation on October 31, 2005, would be delayed for a year largely due to the lower-than-expected progress on the core system.