China-Tibet Rail Line, A Railroad That Is Literally Picking Up

There hasn’t been anything like it since the Central Pacific in 1863 hired Chinese labor to build the transcontinental railroad west over the Sierra Nevada (10,000ft), or in 1895 when the British built a line in East Africa using hired Indian labor to go west from Mombasa across the steep escarpment of the Great Rift Valley (8,000ft).

The Chinese railroad to Tibet does them all one better; it is the world’s highest rail track at 13,000 to 16,000ft and includes the construction of special raised beds across 342 miles of permafrost.

Two of the most obvious reasons for this breathtaking venture were to open up Tibet to settlement and to provide military transport to far-flung border regions. Both reasons are disclaimed by the Chinese government. They reason that this $3.68 billion undertaking is to increase tourism (800,000 visitors expected annually) and to improve communication in order to further national Chinese unity. A far cry from the open call for settlement of the West in the US by a Civil War Congress, who granted millions of dollars in loans to the rail companies along with millions of acres of land to sell in order to repay the loans. They strongly encouraged settlement at all costs even to the eviction of native Americans.

Or in the case of the 1899 British effort in East Africa, called "The Lunatic Express" by the tabloids, financed by the taxpayers in Great Britain; the intention was to allow British settlers to profit from land grants made available in regions serviced by the railroad even as the Africans were excluded.

Unlike these early free-wheeling efforts of the Victorian age, the Qinghai-Tibet railway involved meticulous, costly, long term planning, and strongly discouraged any talk of settlement or displacement of native Tibetans.

The track had to be laid across acres of shifting terrain and pass through rarified landscapes in which many species thrive of wild plants, birds, medicinal plants and animals, such as, Tibetan antelopes, wild yaks, Tibetan wild donkeys and about 283 other animal species. It would also pass by the sacred Namco Lake, north of Lhasa, the highest inland lake in the world, and the Hoh Xil Nature Reserve, which, at 18,000 sq. miles, is larger than Vermont and New Hampshire combined.

No wonder the attention of the world has been focused on this massive undertaking. That alone would ensure that the planners and construction workers would be environmentally friendly, and they were. International interest aside, the Chinese spent over $180 million on conservation, and their effort paid off. A 2003 US Embassy report in Beijing concluded that the railway builders were doing a respectable job of protecting the tundra on the surface of the plateau, and the new railway may not have much impact on local pastoral activity.

In comparison, consider the African line, built by the British 108 years earlier. That line traversed a broad savannah region where herds of animals existed in profusion never before seen by western travelers. Thousands upon thousands of game animals roamed in enormous herds. Elephants, rhinos, and large packs of lions were so plentiful that they dwarfed the work of man, and they could hold their own. Not only did they occasionally attack the trains physically, but over 140 workers were taken by man-eaters. The open cars of the ‘Lunatic Express’ on one occasion in 1898 allowed lions to enter and make off with a high ranking railway official!

Not a problem with the Chinese trains because the passenger cars have to be sealed for oxygen enhancement purposes, and large predators are not common in the area. As expected, litter and garbage were the big problems predicted, especially along the old road that parallels the line. It acted as a service road during the building of the railway. Along the rail line itself, the largest immediate problem would be trash and toilet waste, especially with such a high volume of traffic (270,000 passengers and 37,000 tons of cargo in the first four months.) To resolve this, trash and waste generated onboard trains is carried back to Golmud to be processed, and a special weekly train collects any waste generated by the stations.

Thus, the neatest and highest train in the world appears on track, providing it can avoid several large problems over the long haul. These are problems unrelated to trash pick-up and are not likely to go away any time soon.

Setting aside the problems of shifting terrain and unstable conditions caused by global warming as it affects permafrost, there is the fear that migration to Tibet by jobless Han Chinese will accelerate; if that happens, eventually the immigrants may outnumber Tibetans. Another specter raised by the US Embassy report, was a potential increase in the infection rate of HIV/AIDS.

Any increase in transport, business and travel in the region means more sex and drug traffic. Among the key cities would be Golmud, a frontier town that is fast becoming a hub for the region. It was suggested that here would be the most likely place to wage an AIDS prevention campaign, an effort that would ground this whole program in reality. To become, the "Heavenly Road," perhaps the Qinghai-Tibet railway will have to rise to the occasion.