CHINA-NPC: RAILWAYS
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During the ongoing NPC session the Chinese government confirmed plans to accelerate construction of a new railway line to Lhasa in Tibet from Chengdu and that of an extension of the railway to Kyirong on the border with Nepal. The new railway will facilitate further large-scale exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources and greater population migration into Tibet. Officials confirmed that work on the Sichuan-Tibet railway would be accelerated this year in the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), beginning with work on the first stage of the route, Lhasa to Nyingtri (or Kongpo, Chinese: Linzhi) in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Linzhi, which is already a military base, is just across Arunachal Pradesh in India. Lobsang Gyaltsen, Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region government, said during a meeting of Tibetan delegates to China's NPC that: "We really do place a lot of emphasis on this railway." The Chinese state media said it would cut journey time from Chengdu to Lhasa from 42 hours by train and three days by road to less than 15 hours. Lin Shijin, a senior civil engineer at China Railway Corporation, was cited by China Daily as saying: "It's like the largest rollercoaster in the world. With a designed service life of 100 years, it is believed to be one of the most difficult railway projects to build on Earth."
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