CHINA-TIBET: LHASA-NYINGTRI RAILWAY LINE

Construction has begun on a new line to Nyingtri (Chinese: Linzhi) in the TAR, in the sensitive border area with Arunachal Pradesh, which the Chinese government flagged as “a new era in railway construction”. The Nyingtri line will be part of a new railway route linking the TAR to the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu, and beyond, running east from Lhasa. Referring to this connection, the blogger writes that: “According to guancha.cn, the Shigatse-Lhasa-Nyingtri railway with Lhasa as its strategic fulcrum, is to be used for passengers as well as for commodities and military personnel. From a geopolitical and regional military perspective, the strategic value of the Lhasa–Shigatse Railway is shocking! With Lhasa as its main hub, Shigatse as its western wing and Nyingtri as its eastern wing, it forms a circular area covering a distance of 700 kilometres from the east to the west and thus works towards safeguarding the Tibetan borderlands.” The Lhasa-Nyingtri-Chengdu rail network is of high importance to the Chinese Party state, given Xi Jinping’s emphasis on the importance of control of Tibet’s border areas.





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