China's Picturesque Tibet Autonomous Region: News & Images

[cirr]

Six lines under construction or planned/proposed。

Xinhua | 2013-7-6 12:51:27

By Agencies

Seven years after the Qinghai-Tibet Railway went into operation, the "roof of the world" is about to see more railways connecting it to other parts of China.

Several new railway lines are either under construction or being planned to form a rail network in the sparsely populated Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in western China, according to the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company, the operator of the world's highest railway.

During China's 12th Five Year Plan (2011-2015) period, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway will branch out in all directions, ending the history of no railways in the southern part of Tibet Autonomous Region and strengthening its ties with neighboring provinces.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which spans 1,956 km from Xining, Qinghai Province, to Lhasa, regional capital of Tibet, carried 10.76 million people and 56.06 million tonnes of cargo in 2012. With these new extension lines in place, the company estimates that its passenger and cargo loads will increase to 14 million and 90 tonnes, respectively, in 2015.

The railway has led to a boom in tourism in Tibet. In 2012, more than 10 million tourists visited the autonomous region, up 21.7 percent year on year, and tourism revenue surged 30.3 percent to 12.64 billion yuan (2.06 billion US dollars).

According to Zhu Jianping, the company's vice general manager, the railway network will bring major cities in western China closer.

One of the first extensions to be completed will be a 253-km line linking Lhasa to Xigaze, a historical city in southwestern Tibet.

Construction of the line began in September 2010, and is expected to finish at the end of this year, Losang Jamcan, chairman of the Tibet regional government, said during China's annual parliamentary session in March.

The company is also considering a line between Lhasa to Nyingchi, a prefecture in the southeastern part of the autonomous region famous for its virgin forests.

Meanwhile, two new lines will extend from Golmud, a city in Qinghai that serves as an important junction on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. One will run toward Dunhuang in northwest China's Gansu Province and the other to Korla, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

With 12.9 billion yuan in investment, construction on the Golmud-Dunhuang line was kicked off last October and is expected to be completed in five years, company spokesperson Wang Tao told Xinhua.

This extension will join existing railways that link Xinjiang with Qinghai and Gansu provinces, forming a circular railway network upon completion.

The proposal for the Golmud-Korla line passed a feasibility test in June. With a length of 1,222.9 km and an investment of 33.5 billion yuan, this extension will, for the first time, provide direct rail transportation between Tibet and Xinjiang, reducing the trip between Lhasa and Urumqi by more than 1,000 km.

In a bid to make the plateau more accessible to southwest China, authorities in Qinghai have also proposed adding two more lines linking economic powerhouse Chengdu, Sichuan Province, to Golmud and Xining.

However, building and operating railways on the world's highest plateau are no easy feats. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway was designed and built with ecological considerations in mind. More than 1.5 billion yuan was spent on environmental conservation along its route, accounting for 5 percent of the project's total spending.

The railway has 33 special passageways for rare animals, including the critically-endangered Tibetan antelope. It also bypassed celestial burial grounds and lamaseries to show respect to local custom and protect religious sites.

Wang Jinchang, a section manager with the engineering affairs department of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company, said an additional 195 million yuan has been invested over the past seven years to improve local ecology and protect wildlife.

"The Qinghai-Tibet Railway has provided a lot of experience for us to draw on for the construction and operation of future railway projects," Zhu said.

"The plateau railway network will be energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly and have minimal ecological impact," he added.

China Exclusive: Qinghai-Tibet Railway expands its reach - CHINA - Globaltimes.cn

 

[beijingwalker]

large photos of Qinghai-Tibet Railyway,incredible engineering miracle,running on the roof of the world.

Running on the roof of the world，Qinghai–Tibet railway - SkyscraperCity

 

[Kiss_of_the_Dragon]

China’s Longyuan has installed the first five 1.5MW turbines at what it is billing as the world’s highest-altitude wind farm, 4,900 metres above sea level in Tibet.

Once completed, the 49.5MW project will feature 33 Guodian turbines. The wind farm is situated on a plateau in Nagqu county, north of the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

China's National Energy Administration approved the project on 19 March, 2012. Longyuan described the approval process as “complex” partly because local farmers and herdsmen objected.

“Longyuan has long dreamed of building a wind farm in Tibet,” the company said in a Chinese-language statement.

The company faces a number of challenges in building the project, including harsh weather conditions, altitude sickness and a shortened construction


http://www.rechargenews.com/wind/asia_australia/article1334213.ece
---

Tibet is will become increasingly important for China in term of energy generator such as Hydro-electricity, now wind-farming

 

[Kiss_of_the_Dragon]

typical video on wind farming

Wind Power Generation in China - YouTube

 

[cirr]

After 1.6 billion yuan and four and a half year of construction that often involved life threatening dangers, extreme hardships and technological challenges, China formally opened to traffic on Oct 31 2013 the 117.3km highway linking Bowo and the strategic Metog (Chinese: Muoto） County Seat mere 20 km from India occupied Zangnan：

[YouKu]XNjI4NTc3OTA4[/YouKu]

Video: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjI4NTc3OTA4.html

 

[cnleio]

A important strategic highway from Lhasa city to South of Tibet.

 

[cirr]

An area where VD200，a tailstock vertical take-off and landing UAV

under development at CAC， might find a good use。

 

[skyknight]

I will drive my car to South Tibet oneday

 

[cirr]

Do More，Talk Less

Updated: November 1, 2013 03:14 IST

China opens new highway near Arunachal Pradesh border

Nearly 1 （Correction：1.6）billion Yuan project comes to light after seven failed attempts over the past 50 years

China on Thursday opened a new highway that links what the government has described as Tibet’s “last isolated county” – located near the border with Arunachal Pradesh – with the rest of the country and will now provide all-weather access to the strategically-important region.

Chinese state media have hailed the opening of the highway to Medog – which lies close to the disputed eastern section of the border with India – as a technological breakthrough, with the project finally coming to fruition after seven failed attempts over the past fifty years.

China first started attempting to build the highway to Medog – a landlocked county in Tibet’s Nyingchi prefecture – in the 1960s, according to State media reports, in the aftermath of the 1962 war with India.

With Thursday’s opening of the road, every county in Tibet is now linked through the highway network, underlining the widening infrastructure gulf across the disputed border, even as India belatedly pushes forward an upgrading of border roads in more difficult terrain.

The official Xinhua News Agency on Thursday described Medog as “the last roadless county in China”. Before this week, Medog was the only one of China’s 2,100 counties to remain isolated from the highway network, according to State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV).

What the project will do

State media reports have focused on the development benefits that the project would bring and have sought to play down the strategic dimensions. Local officials said the road’s opening will bring down commodity prices and widen access to healthcare.

The road will also provide access to the border county for nine months of the year. That the government was willing to spend as much as 950 million Yuan（Wrong。The final figure is 1600 million Yuan）– or $ 155 million – on a 117-km highway, with ostensibly few economic returns expected, has underscored the project’s importance to State planners.

Local officials said prior to the opening of the highway, reaching Medog required traversing the treacherous Galung La and Doxong La mountains at an altitude of 4,000 metres. With frequent landslides, the road was often rendered impassable.

Now, the road will be accessible for “8 to 9 months per year, barring major natural disasters”, Ge Yutao, Communist Party head of the transportation department for the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), told Xinhua.

Work on the 117-km road began in 2009, a year after the project was given the green light by the State Council, or Cabinet.

Renewed attention on infrastructure projects

The opening of the road comes at a time when there has been renewed attention on infrastructure projects in border areas in India and China.

Last week, both countries signed a Border Defence Cooperation Agreement (BDCA) during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Beijing, aimed at expanding confidence-building measures. The agreement calls for setting up channels of communication between military commands, increasing the number of border personnel meetings, and formalising rules such as no tailing of patrols, to built trust and avoid incidents.

The agreement does not specify or limit either country’s plans to boost infrastructure – an issue that, analysts say, has in the past triggered tensions along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC), most notably in April when a Chinese incursion sparked a three-week-long stand-off in Depsang, Ladakh.

Han Hua, a South Asia scholar at Peking University, suggested in a recent interview that the “basic reason” for the incident was “too much construction” along the border. The Chinese side, she acknowledged, did not have to build closer to the disputed LAC because their infrastructure, as well as more favourable terrain enabled quicker mobilisation.

“If we don’t have the overall collaboration of the military, policy-makers and decision-makers on both sides,” she said, “it will be difficult to avoid such incidents”.

‘India’s plans will not be limited’

The BDCA, Indian officials said, will not limit India’s plans to upgrade infrastructure. It recognises the principle of equal and mutual security, which allows either side to pursue its security in its own way. At the same time, officials say the BDCA will still help “regulate activity” along the border by opening up new channels of communication, even as the border continues to remain a matter of dispute.

On Thursday, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun told a regular press conference that military personnel would hold “regular meetings” and “make joint efforts” to maintain peace in border areas, following the signing of the BDCA. The agreement, he said according to a Xinhua report, “summarised good practices and experiences on the management of differences in China-India border areas”.

Keywords: Sino-Indian border, Arunachal-China border, infrastructure, Tibet Autonomous Region

http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...r-arunachal-pradesh-border/article5302068.ece

 

[Raphael]

Infrastructural development and increased integration with the rest of the country's economy is the only way to relieve the Tibetan region's economic backwardness. Ultimately, there are few other options for landlocked regions in high mountainous terrain - it's already a miracle that Tibet has made far greater progress than Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, etc.

 

[Destro]

Excellent news.

Need to develop more infrastructure in Tibet.

 

[armchairPrivate]

That highway is incredible. The engineering of building it must be pretty nifty. According to the news here, this IS the last county in China connected by road. In other words, all counties in China are connected.

 

[haha]

When China accuses India of wrongly occupying what it calls South Tibet, it does not mention since when. Records before 1947 including postings of officials of British India would show that NEFA (North East Frontier Agency) was under British administration from almost the beginning of their control of India. There was even oil discovery and the related factory and pipelines at the place called Digboi, the name derived from typical British phrase"Dig Boy". People there have no memory of change of rulers before or after the British period.

China, Pakistan, and India share around 3500 nuclear bombs, 7 million soldiers, 25 million pieces of hardware, 3 billion people, 5,000 Kilometers of disputed land borders, and 8,000 Kilometers of coastline. Logic indicates a gathering fire storm bigger than before in history of man.

 

[Kiss_of_the_Dragon]

Tibet is a good place to relaxe and to admire the sky and stars during the night.

 

[yusheng]

震撼唯美延时摄影《西藏星空》 -频道：热点资讯3-在线观看-PPS爱频道