China's high-speed, high-altitude railway to Tibet carried troops to the region for the first time, state media has reported, in a development likely to fuel concerns about the railway's impact on the restive Himalayan area.
The brief Xinhua report late on Friday did not say how many soldiers were aboard the train that left a provincial city on Friday for Lhasa. The report cited unnamed sources in the People's Liberation Army as saying that the "railway will become a main option" for transporting troops to Tibet, replacing the air and road routes used since Chinese troops annexed Tibet 57 years ago.
The US$4.2 billion "Sky Train" uses special technology to snake across the Tibetan plateau's permafrost and 5,000m mountain passes and has cut travel time to the regional capital of Lhasa from Beijing and other cities to two days, instead of weeks.
The train now carries about 75 percent of all goods between Tibet and other parts of China, the Xinhua report said.
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