Controversial Tibetan Railway Moving Ahead<
(AP | Beijing | December 20, 2002)
Workers on China's controversial 3.18-billion-dollar Tibetan railway have laid 120 kilometers (72 miles) of track in the first year of construction, with progress on the first rail link to the roof of the world progressing steadily, officials said.
In the first year of construction the government spent 5.3 billion yuan (642 million dollars) and employed 25,000 engineers and workers to lay one kilometer of track a day since June 29, Minister of Railways Fu Zhihuan told journalists.
The 1,118-kilometre (650-mile) line will link the Tibetan capital of Lhasa with Golmud in Qinghai province, becoming the longest railway at the highest elevation in the world. The line is the centerpiece of China's ongoing "develop the west program" which envisions bringing economic development to China's most impoverished and least densely populated regions of Tibet, Qinghai and the Xinjiang Autonomous region.
Along with the hoped for economic growth, a steady stream of Han Chinese settlers are expected to move into the region to search for a better life and to escape the overcrowded rural and urban communites of China's eastern provinces.
"The construction of the Qinghai-Tibetan railway... will accelerate economic development in Qinghai and Tibet, raise the living standards of the people and accelerate the speed of building an overall well-off society," Sun Yongfu, vice minister of railways, said.
In the first year of construction, the railway has raised the grosss domestic product of Golmud city in Qinghai province by 30 percent over the previous year.
More than 7,000 ethnic minority workers from Qinghai and 700 Tibetans have joined workers from all over China in the project, Sun said. Construction materials and some machinery has also been procured locally, he added.
Authorities in the northern Tibetan prefecture of Nagqu earlier said plans were already underway to gather widely-dispersed herders into 25 towns and 89 large villages running along the railway in Nagqu alone. The plan would increase the region's urban population from 40,000 to 80,000 people in five years when the railway will be finished, officials say.
Similar efforts are expected to be made in neighboring Qinghai province where such small communities could better develop economy of scales, creating more employment and economic opportunities. Tibetans' rights advocates have condemned the project, saying that although a railway could bring economic benefits, it was part of an effort to encourage Han Chinese migrants to settle in Tibet and dilute the Tibetan population to firm Beijing's control over the region.
The railway and the expected influx of Han Chinese would make Tibetans second-class citizens in their own land, human rights groups have said. Another 1,600-kilometer rail line between Lhasa and Kunming city, southwestern Yunnan province is already on the drawing board and is expected to cost 7.6 billion dollars.
Friends of Tibet (INDIA),
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