Jul 6th 2006 | BEIJING
From
The Economist print edition
Tibet is linked to the rest of China
AT LONG last, or so Chinese officials have been crowing, the remote
Himalayan vastness of Tibet has been connected to the railway network.
Modernity, they proudly and not uncontroversially say, has arrived in
this backward region in the form of an engineering miracle that has
laid tracks on land gripped year-round by ice, a railway line at higher
altitude than any other in the world.
The launch on July 1st of the first passenger train services to Lhasa,
the Tibetan capital, has been covered by the Chinese media with hoopla
only comparable to that surrounding the country's first launch of a man
into space three years ago. President Hu Jintao attended the send-off
from Golmud in the neighbouring province of Qinghai. As with China's
space launches, the foreign media were kept well away (some were
grudgingly allowed onto a train that arrived in Lhasa two days after
the first one had successfully arrived). Tibetan exiles had been
protesting that the train would unleash a flood of Chinese immigrants
and destroy their environment and culture. China did not want that kind
of coverage on what was, not coincidentally, the Communist Party's 85th
birthday.
The 1,142 km (710 mile) Golmud-Lhasa line certainly sounds
impressive. It took five years to build, at a cost of an official $4
billion. It traverses oxygen-starved, earthquake-prone terrain that for
most of the way is over 4,000 metres (13,120 feet) above sea level and
rises to 5,072 metres—not far off the altitude of Mount Everest's base
camp. Carriages are sealed and individual oxygen supplies are provided
for passengers. About half of the route is across permafrost, which
poses particular challenges because of the danger of subsidence caused
by melting at the surface in summer. To keep things safely frozen,
cooling systems have been installed in the ground. To add to all that,
crossing points have had to be built for migratory Tibetan antelopes,
an endangered species.
Connecting the last rail-free region of China to the railway network
has been a mission of enormous political importance to a leadership
bent on quashing any notion of Tibet's separateness. But the railway is
unlikely to prove either the economic godsend to Tibet that Chinese
accounts portray it as, or the harbinger of mass immigration that
critics of Chinese rule in Tibet fear.
Only one or two freight trains a day in each direction are currently
planned. Most goods will therefore continue to be transported by truck
along the four highways that connect Lhasa to the rest of China. The
single-track rail link is circuitous and connects the region to the
more prosperous parts of China via hundreds of kilometres of the most
backward areas of China's west. A more direct connection would have
cost even more to build.
Zhang Chengyao, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says the
railway's main contribution will be to Tibet's tourism industry. The
plan is to run three passenger trains a day each way, each able to
carry around 900 people. For many, approaching Tibet gradually by train
will be preferable to flying in, as it will allow more time to
acclimatise and reduce the chance of altitude sickness. But demand
could be affected by the limited capacity of the Potala Palace, the
historic residence of the Dalai Lamas, Tibet's spiritual leaders. This
amazing tourist attraction has increased its daily ticket quota in
response to an expected increase in visitor numbers, but media reports
say many travellers will still be turned away.
Even without the railway, tourism—the mainstay of Tibet's
economy—has been booming, thanks to growing interest among China's
newly affluent urbanites. This has helped to promote average annual
economic growth of around 12% in the past five years (see chart).
Tibet's government forecasts that the same rate of growth will
continue, implicitly suggesting that it does not expect the railway to
make a big difference. As the economy grows, migrants will surely
continue to come. But many will continue to bargain for cheap deals on
buses.