China plans railway line to connect Tibet, Xinjiang 

New Delhi: China will soon start construction on an ambitious new railway line connecting Xinjiang and Tibet to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and through the disputed Aksai Chin region, according to a new railway plan released by the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). According to the medium- and long-term rail network plan released by the TAR Development and Reform Commission on its official website recently for the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), “the region will expand its railway network and improve its quality.” The plan envisages expanding the TAR rail network from the current 1,400 km to 4,000 km by 2025, including new routes that will connect India and will walk to the borders of China with Nepal. There are only three rail lines currently operating in Tibet: the Qinghai–Tibet link which opened in 2006, the Lhasa–Shigatse rail started in 2014, and the Lhasa–Nyingchi line which started operations in 2021. The Lhasa–Nyingchi line runs southeast of Tibet and near the border with India’s Arunachal Pradesh. The line is being extended further east to the provincial capital of Sichuan and Chengdu, a major economic and military centre in western China, reducing travel time between the two regional capitals from 36 hours to 12 hours. Under the plan, border railway lines will be built to Gyrong, a land port on the Nepal-Tibet border, and Yadong County in the Chumbi Valley, which borders India’s Sikkim and Bhutan. The railway construction is seen as serving two purposes: boosting border security by enabling China to more closely integrate border regions and enable rapid border mobilization when needed, and accelerating Tibet’s economic integration with the hinterland. While Qinghai province has rail links to Tibet, the plan will now extend railway links to three other neighbouring provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu for the first time. Passing close to LAC The proposed railway would start at Shigatse in Tibet, and run northwest along the Nepal border, before cutting north through Aksai Chin and terminating at Hotan in Xinjiang. The planned route will pass through Rutog and around Pangong Lake on the Chinese side of the LAC. The first section, from Shigatse to Pakhuktso, will be completed by 2025, with the rest of the line, to Hotan, expected to be finished by 2035. As per the plan, multiple railway projects will have seen progress by 2025, including the smooth implementation of the Ya’an-Nyingchi section of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway (currently underway), the Shigatse-Pakhuktso section of the Xinjiang-Tibet Railway and the Bomi-Ra’uk section of the Yunnan-Tibet Railway, a state media reported quoting the plan releases by TAR. The Xinjiang-Tibet Railway will roughly follow the route of the G219 national highway, also known as the Tibet-Xinjiang Highway which runs along the southwestern border of China. The construction of G219 through Aksai Chin had created tensions between India and China in the lead-up to the 1962 war, it said. “The improvement of the regional railway network will be of great importance for promoting socioeconomic development and safeguarding national security,” the report said. “Other key projects include the electrification of the existing Qinghai-Tibet Railway and upgrading the double-track railways of the Pakhuktso-Hetian line of the Xinjiang-Tibet Railway and the Lhasa-Nyingchi Railway,” a China Daily report said. The region’s rail network will reach 4,000 km by 2025 and 5,000 km by 2035, the report quoted the railway network plan. Crushing expression of dissent According to the Tibet Policy Institute, China hoped that this infrastructure strategy would help crush all expressions of dissent and ultimately subdue and disintegrate the resistance of Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet. Cities in Tibet such as Lhasa, due to the influx of Chinese immigrant workers coupled with rapid urbanization, are seeing a growing trend of intermarriage between Tibetans and Chinese. The Communist Party of China government has made “an unprecedented scale of investment in infrastructure construction in Tibet, specifically in connectivity areas such as railways, highways, and airports.” Investments were also made in Tibet to build hydroelectric power, for urbanization, mining, tourism, military and government infrastructure. These huge investments in infrastructural development are said to be taken by China to strengthen its control over the region that it illegally invaded and occupied. TAR was formally established in 1965 to replace the Tibet Area, the former administrative division of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established after the annexation of Tibet. The establishment was about five years after the 1959 Tibetan uprising and the dismissal of the Kashag, and about 13 years after the original annexation. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.