MCLC: Tibetan railroad to extend to Indian border

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Tibetan railroad to extend to Indian border
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Source: NYT (7/25/14):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/26/world/asia/china-plans-extension-of-railr
oad-to-india-through-tibet.html

China Plans Extension of Railroad to India Through Tibet
By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — China plans to extend by 2020 a railroad on the high
trans-Himalayan plateau of Tibet to the borders of India, Bhutan and
Nepal, according to a report in People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of
the Chinese Communist Party.

The extension would lengthen a 157-mile rail route that is expected to
open next month from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, to Shigatse, the
traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, a revered spiritual leader. In 2006,
China opened the first railway to Tibet, linking Lhasa to China via the
province of Qinghai.

The planned lengthening was criticized by Tibet advocates who said it
would bring too many ethnic Han migrants to Lhasa and other Tibetan areas.
The Wednesday report in People’s Daily cited Yang Yulin, deputy head of
the railways administration in Tibet, saying that two additional rail
lines would be added from Shigatse — one to Yadong, a point near the
Indian and Bhutan borders, and one to Jilong, an area near the border with
Nepal.

China and India have a long-running dispute over their Himalayan border.
Two areas are in contention: one in the Aksai Chin area of China, which
abuts the Ladakh region of India, in the western Himalayas; and the other
in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, in the east. Of the two, the
dispute over Arunachal Pradesh is more contentious.