China's new railway to Tibet has the potential to significantly alter the nation's trading and military relationships with South Asia, analysts say.
China promotes the line connecting the Tibetan capital of Lhasa with the rest of China, which opened on Saturday, as a key to developing the isolated Himalayan region known as the "roof of the world."
The government has already announced plans to extend the line from Lhasa to the edge of South Asia, with tracks to be laid all the way to the strategically important town of Yadong near the Indian border over the next decade.
Yadong, also known as Chomo in Tibet and Yatung in India, is 31km southwest of Lhasa, 100km from the Bhutanese capital Thimphu and 450km from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.
Observers say China's ability to access South Asia's markets will grow dramatically once the rail network has been expanded to Yadong, and even just the service from Lhasa would be of benefit.
"As China is one of the world's emerging economic powers, the new transportation service means that they will have an opportunity to dominate the South Asian market in the future," said Rajeshwor Acharya, an economist and former Nepalese ambassador to China.
"The flow of cheap Chinese goods will increase, which will have a negative impact on local industry in the South Asian countries."
In a sign of things to come, China and India will reopen on Thursday the Nathu La Himalayan pass, part of the famed Silk Road trading route, which had been closed since the two nations fought a brief border war in 1962.
The pass is just 30km from Yadong and has already been described by both countries as an important new avenue for bilateral trade.
However, not all in South Asia are fearful of China's expanding access to the region, with some in Nepal saying the kingdom will be able to reduce its trade dependence on India.
"It's a rosy prospect for Nepal to increase business with China," said Bijaya Ghimire, president of the business journalists' association in Nepal.
"So far Nepalese goods have only been able to reach the peripheral market of Tibet but with the operation of the railway, the products could penetrate the mainland China market," Ghimire said.
"At present 65 percent of Nepal's total international business including imports and exports is with India, whereas with China, it is less than 5 percent," Ghimire said
Some other analysts said the railway to Lhasa could be more of a concern for India on the military front rather than the economic one.
"It will significantly augment China's offensive military capability against India," said Brahma Chellany of the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research.
"At short notice, China will be able to intensify military pressure on India by rapidly mobilizing up to 12 divisions," Chellany said.
"The new railway facilitates the easy transport of intermediate-range missiles and would allow China to rail-base in Tibet some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles," Chellany said.
"China indeed has designed its latest ICBM, the DF-31A, as a rail-mobile weapon," Chellany said.
Rahul Bedi, correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly, said China was surrounding India by nurturing relations with Pakistan in the west, Bangladesh and Myanmar in the east and Sri Lanka in the south.
"If you join all the dots and look at Chinese activities in the region, it is effectively the Chinese encircling India -- using the ring of pearls strategy in the Indian Ocean region and a policy of encirclement in the mountainous area of Tibet," Bedi said.
However China stresses its peaceful intentions and its relations with India have improved in recent years, as evidenced by this week's reopening of the Nathu La pass.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS