China plans to use the railway to transport Chinese migrants directly into the heart of Tibet in order to overwhelm the Tibetan population and tighten its stranglehold over our people…. (The railway is) engineered to destroy the very fabric of Tibetan identity.

— Lhadon Tethong, a Tibetan living in exile, decrying China’s new Qinghai-Tibet railway as an opportunistic colonialist ploy. The railway runs from the Chinese capital of Beijing to the traditional Tibetan capital of Lhasa for 4,000 kilometers, the final 1,110 kilometers of which links what was until July 3rd the final frontier of the Chinese rail system to the Qinghai-Tibet railway and into Lhasa. The final 1,110-kilometer segment of the railway takes passengers through the ether of Tanggula Pass, which stands at 5,072 meters (16,640 feet) and makes the railway the world’s highest, complete with oxygen tubes and controlled oxygen levels, windows with UV filters to deflect the sun, and a budget of $4.2 billion to build.

While China touts the railway as a lifeline that will bring opportunities and accessibility to the region, some Tibetans condemn the project as an attempt to import ethnic Han Chinese immigrants into the region to further obliterate the Tibetan culture.  The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan community, has been living in exile in India since 1959, nine years after the People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet to occupy the nation in 1950.

Mimi Hanaoka