Eight months after its historic opening the railway to Tibet has already brought economic benefits to the remote region, but detractors continue to see the new line as a tool for Chinese colonization.
"I have returned home," said Wang Ping, a few days after stepping off the the train as it arrived in Lhasa.
Wang, originally from the suburbs of Shanghai about 3,000km away, moved to Lhasa a year ago to open a small restaurant.
PHOTO: AFP
"The train ticket is only one-third of the cost of an plane ticket," he said as he took his son by the hand.
Wang is not the only one to arrive in Tibet seeking a new life.
Many of Lhasa's taxi drivers, most of whom are ethnic Han Chinese, see a good future on the Tibetan plateau.
"Everything is changing here very quickly, partly due to the train, and this is only the beginning," said a 27-year-old driver who came to Lhasa last year with his wife and child from central Henan Province.
Booming
For tourist agencies too business is booming.
"The number of our clients tripled in 2006 and this is thanks to the train," said Luosang Caiwang, head of Saikang Travel in Lhasa.
"The train is great for us, and for the local population it is beneficial," said the Tibetan, aged in his forties.
Luosang said both the economy and society in general had benefited from the railway as it had linked Tibet, formerly one of the most remote regions in the world, to China's wealthy and developed eastern seaboard and helped break its isolation.
"About 60 percent of investment in the hotel industry is done by Tibetans," he said.
For the government, the benefits of the railway are evident. Tibet's GDP grew by 13.4 percent last year, the highest level of growth since 1995.
But the authorities also acknowledge that the impact of the train -- the highest in the world with parts surpassing 5,000m in elevation -- is not only economic.
"It will promote cultural communication and religious harmony between Han [Chinese] and Tibetans and will advance the evolution of human civilization," said Ge Quansheng, vice director of Tibetan tourism at the ministry of railways.
According to the ministry, 700,000 travellers have taken the train to Tibet since the line went into service on July 1 last year.
"We are expecting 1.3 million passengers in 2010," Ge said.
Even local delegates to China's rubber stamp National People's Congress took the train to Beijing last week to attend the annual parliamentary session.
Of the passengers arriving at the Lhasa railway station, most are ethnic Chinese, including businessmen and officials, leading people in the Himalayan capital to comment on how the face of the city is becoming increasingly Chinese.
From the heights of the Potala Palace, the ancient home of a series of Dalai Lamas, Lhasa looks like any other Chinese city -- and although it has yet to acquire the skyscrapers that dominate the more developed towns throughout the country, the current rate of development hints that a jagged skyline cannot be too far off.
According to the UN's office in Beijing, three-quarters of the homes in Lhasa's historical Tibetan quarter have been destroyed in the last five years.
Expanding
And the city is expanding. The road toward the airport is dotted with car dealerships.
Beneath the snow-capped mountains are rows of concrete housing units draped with colorful prayer flags -- and the five-star red flag of communist China.
According to official figures, Tibetans make up 93.5 percent of the region's population and 87 percent of Lhasa.
Exiled Tibetans accuse the government of seeking to deceive the outside world and denounce the growing number of Chinese coming to the region as the economy grows.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, on Saturday criticized the new railway linking Tibet with China's densely populated east, saying it had led to more outsiders flooding the region.
He said in a speech marking the 48th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule that there was nothing wrong with infrastructure development of the deeply poor region.
`Deep concern'
"However, it is a source of deep concern that ever since the railway line became operational [last July], Tibet has seen a further increase in Chinese population transfer," the Dalai Lama said in a speech posted on his official Web site.
The local government acknowledges that the official numbers do not include the "floating population," but remains unclear about the exact extent of new arrivals.
The Dalai Lama has recently argued that remaining part of the communist state is in the economic interests of the Tibetan people.
But he has also said: "We are opposed to the cultural genocide led by China through the Han population and the expansion of the Chinese language in Tibet."
Important tool
China sees the 1,142km railway as an important tool in modernizing and developing Tibet, which has been part of China since Chinese troops occupied the region in 1950.
However, critics say that the line is allowing the Han Chinese, the national majority, to flood into Tibet, leading to the devastation of the local culture as well as a substantial acceleration of environmental degradation of the pristine region.
There has been a "further deterioration of its [Tibet's] environment, misuse and pollution of its water and exploitation of all natural resources, all causing huge devastation to the land and all those who inhabit it," the Dalai Lama said.
The Dalai Lama was speaking in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala where he has lived since fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
Autonomy
He called on Saturday for "genuine" regional autonomy for all Tibetans and said that while the Chinese constitution promised regional autonomy to minority nationalities, the guarantee was not "implemented fully."
"What happens on the ground is that large populations from the majority nationalities have spread into these minority regions," the Dalai Lama said.
"Consequently, there is a danger of the languages and rich traditions of the minority nationalities becoming gradually extinct," he said.
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