Reporter: John Taylor
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HAMISH ROBERTSON: Finally, to China, where, after four years of construction work – much of it in extremely rugged terrain – the Quinghai Tibet Railway Project is in its final stages.
From an engineering perspective, it’s a remarkable achievement. Much of the 1,100-kilometre track has been built on permafrost, which presented formidable technical difficulties, and some sections of the line are more than four and a half thousand metres above sea level.
But critics of the multi-billion dollar scheme claim the cost far outweighs any economic benefit, and that the real purpose of the project is political – to consolidate Tibet’s integration with China, and further marginalise Tibet’s Indigenous population and its ancient culture.
This report has been prepared by our China Correspondent, John Taylor.
(sound of workmen chanting)
JOHN TAYLOR: It’s a railway over the roof of the world. Since 2001, workmen have steadily laid the track for the first rail line into Tibet.
It starts in the province of Qinghai, and when finished will stretch for more than 1,000 kilometres over areas of land more than five kilometres above sea level.
No one’s ever built a railway this high up.
(sound of sledgehammer operating)
There’s less than a year to go until it’s finished and trials begin. Workmen are completing a bridge over the Lhasa River, just outside Tibet’s capital, Lhasa.
It’s been aptly named the Especially Big Bridge.
Chief Engineer Wang Weigang says it hasn’t been easy to get this far.
“There are three major difficulties,” he says. “The first one is the high altitude and lack of oxygen. The second one is deep frozen earth and the fragile ecology.”
At the moment two highways are the only land routes linking Tibet to the rest of China. Over the past decades China has been pouring money into Tibet to boost its economy and secure Chinese control over the disputed land.
Xu Jianchang from the Tibetan Development and Reform Commission has high hopes for the railway.
“It will bring great changes to the economic development of the Tibetan Autonomous Region,” he says.
Andrew Fischer is an economist who specialises in Tibet, and has recently written a book called State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet.
ANDREW FISCHER: The railroad, I don’t think, makes any sense economically speaking.
JOHN TAYLOR: Mr Fisher believes the railroad is being built for strategic reasons – to get People’s Liberation Army troops and supplies more easily into Tibet, and to enhance Chinese political control.
Money is no object.
ANDREW FISHER: Last year they announced that they need to put an extra six or seven billion yuan into the railroad to complete it, so we’re looking at a project of over 30 billion yuan essentially.
JOHN TAYLOR: That’s nearly $AU 5-billion – nearly double Tibet’s entire GDP five years ago.
ANDREW FISCHER: What I’m worried about is that right now what we’re seeing is a boom, because so much, there’s a lot of employment and so much money rushing into the province, related to that one single project. But once that project is completed, you might, you’ll most likely see a bust in terms of, the Government will be challenged to maintain subsidies, subsidise investment at such a high level without that project being there, and then you have a drop-off in employment and so forth.
JOHN TAYLOR: Many Tibetans and supporters are worried that the railway will only exacerbate what’s been called cultural genocide by allowing more Han Chinese migration.
Rail lines penetrate three Tibetan communities found outside Tibet proper. In each one, the Han dominate.
In Inner Mongolia, where railroads were built before Communist China was established, the Mongols are outnumbered by nearly five to one.
The Tibetan railway is a remarkable engineering feat, but it will also expose Tibet to the rest of China like never before.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: And that report from John Taylor brings us to the end of today’s program. I hope you can join us again at the same time next week.
