(TibetanReview.net, Jun05’24) —Tibet and Xinjiang are major sources of strategic mineral and natural resources for China while also occupying vital geostrategic positions. They are also rife with resentment against the Chinese occupation rule. Given this fact, China has ‘big plans’ to rail network them more effectively in the coming years.
The aim is to strengthen its hold over its westernmost regions and to ensure a smooth operation of its resource exploitations, reported the scmp.com Jun 3, citing a senior Chinese rail planner.
“The rail network layout still needs to be improved. There are still many places in the western regions left undeveloped, and the major strategic channels for entering and exiting Tibet and Xinjiang need to be strengthened,” Liu Wenxian, a senior official with China Railway Group’s planning department, has said.
“[We will] focus on strengthening strategic trunk channels, such as those from Xinjiang to Tibet, and fill in the ‘blanks’ in railway networks in key western regions so as to comprehensively improve the multidirectional connectivity between Xinjiang, Tibet and the inland,” Liu has said.
While Liu has stressed this as part of China’s plan to strengthen transport links to ensure energy and supply chain security, a Tsinghua University researcher who studies ethnic minority issues in China has emphasized the railway’s role in strengthening control in the two border regions.
“Xinjiang is the gateway for the strategic China-Europe freight trains, while the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (ie, Tibetan Plateau) is extremely important to China’s western border security,” the researcher has said, declining to be named purportedly due to the sensitivity of the topic.
“Beijing has painstakingly restored the order and security in these two regions in the past decade. Now it is time to extend the transport networks into these regions so that people-to-people exchanges can happen and goods from these regions can be sold to other parts of China. These are prerequisites for further integration.”
“People-to-people exchanges” is a euphemism for China’s population transfer policy designed to dilute the ethnographic composition of the historical inhabitants of these regions so as to Sinicize them.
Liu has said that by 2025, China’s modern railway infrastructure would be complete, with its rail network reaching 165,000km (102,526 miles), including 50,000km of high-speed rail lines. He has added that by 2035, China’s rail network will expand to about 200,000km, of which about 70,000km would be high-speed railway.
While rail networking Tibet and Xinjiang are a strategic priority, the only impediment to achieving the grand 2025 and 2035 vision are financial challenges.
The report said China Railway Group has paid for the massive expansion with borrowings. As of last year, its debt rose to 6.13 trillion yuan (US$846 billion), with operating profits of only 330 million yuan.