By Phuntsok Yangchen
DHARAMSHALA, July 25: China has announced that the first rail line connecting Lhasa and Shigatse in Tibet Autonomous Region is all set for operations next month, reported Chinese state media.
China also announced its plans to build railway line to areas bordering India, Nepal and Bhutan by 2020.
The trains are expected to run on the extension line at a speed of 120 kilometers per hour and have 13 stations with altitudes ranging from 3,600 to 4,000 metres.
Chinese government officials have maintained that the new rail link will promote “tourism and rational use of natural resources.”
“It will accelerate transportation of the mineral products, which could only be transmitted through highways that often risk being cut off during rainy seasons or see vehicle turnovers,” said Zhu Bin, a manager with a mineral company based in Lhasa told People’s Daily.
However, Tibetan exiles say the rail line would speed up the Sinicisation of the Tibetan plateau and enable a sharp increase in mining and other industry in the environmentally fragile region.
China’s expansion of its rail network comes at a time when India, under the newly elected PM Narendra Modi, reaches out to smaller neighbors that also share border with China. Modi picked Bhutan as the first country for his visit. India’s foreign minister Sushma Swaraj left for Nepal with a pact to help develop the Himalayan country’s hydro-electric power potential high on the agenda.
Since the operation of first rail line from Golmud to Lhasa a number of tourists and Han Chinese migrating to Tibet have increased. Officials from Chinese railway service estimate that by the end of the 2015, around 20 million tourists will visit Tibet.
In another extension of the Shigatse line, China will be building a rail line, around 275 kms long, towards Kerung of Rasuwa District in Nepal on the Tibet-Nepal border. The Chinese government has already developed Kerung as a special economic zone as per request from Nepal.
China has assured Nepal that it will extend its railway to the erstwhile Himalayan Kingdom to boost economic cooperation between the two countries.
China also plans to extend its rail network close to Arunachal Pradesh in India which in the recent past has been prone to Chinese incursions.
Speaking to Phayul, Shibayan Raha, Director of Seven Sisters Project said, “Very soon Chinese troops will reach the border in trains but looking at how Indian border infrastructure is expanding, Indian troops will still be transported by mules.”
“Apart from china’s plan to extract mineral from occupied Tibet, this new rail line is definitely aimed at India and with a further plan to annex Arunachal Pradesh,” he added.
