By Edward Cody
Lhasa, July 3: After rolling under snow-covered peaks and crossing 2,500 miles, the first train to travel from Beijing to Tibet pulled into a station here Monday, inaugurating the world’s highest railway and opening a new chapter in China’s relentless assimilation of this once-remote mountain territory.
“The train is the realization of a 100-year-old Chinese dream,” said an announcement on the intercom system as the train sped along the route, with wild donkeys, yaks and antelope looking on.
The 16 sleek new carsof Train 27 Special Express took 47 1/2 hours to climb from Beijing, in heavily industrialized eastern China, to the high Tibetan plateau, cupped on one side by the Kun Lun range and the other by the towering Himalayas. Extra oxygen supplies were pumped in to prevent altitude sickness, and outlets for individual oxygen devices were available should passengers feel uncomfortable.
For the Chinese government, the voyage marked a grand success in its “Great Leap West” campaign to develop the sparsely populated flatlands of Xinjiang and the mountain vastness of Tibet, and in the process integrate minority populations into a nation run by the Han Chinese majority.
Tibet is linked with the rest of China by air and road. But officials said the train route, which took five years and more than $4 billion to build, will facilitate commerce, giving Tibet a bigger share in China’s new prosperity, and bring in another half-million tourists a year to spend money in hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops.
“For sure, (the railway) will have an important influence on the opening and developing of the economy and culture in Tibet,” said Lhagpa Phuntshogs, director of the government’s Tibetan Studies Center in Beijing.”
In the descent toward Lhasa, many homes and public buildings displayed bright new Chinese flags, symbolizing the train’s role in drawing Tibet more tightly into Beijing’s orbit.
But for many Buddhist monks who still revere the long-exiled Dalai Lama, the advent of Train 27 raised the specter of another assault on Tibet’s ethnic and national identity. The Chinese Communist Party, they say, has sought to crush Tibetan nationalism with police-state repression and dilute Tibetan ethnicity with Han migration since Mao Zedong’s forces reasserted Chinese control here soon after taking power in 1949.
