Tibet’s sunset, China’s sunrise

LHASA, Tibet — I last traveled the Friendship Highway in 1999, reaching Lhasa after three days of bone-slamming and gut-wrenching dirt tracks divided by frozen streams.

Today, the drive can be done in one 12-hour push over a ribbon of seal-smooth blacktop. It traverses hundreds of miles of the most inhospitable terrain on earth.

These well-maintained roads will swiftly transfer goods and rapidly mobilize military units, which is what Beijing wants and needs. The highway, starting on the Nepal border in Zhangmu, heads toward the north slope of the Himalayas before cutting northeast toward Lhasa, Tibet’s capital.

The expanding Chinese presence starts in Nepal. Chinese goods are more prevalent than ever in roadside shops along the Arniko section of the highway. Most towns along the highway to Lhasa feel new and different: Zhangmu has exploded in growth. Shigatse is barely recognizable as new Chinese-style buildings have supplanted Tibetan ones, save for the old market around the Tashi Lumpo Monastery. And Gyantse has resumed its early 20th century position as a trade point along the commercial corridor between China and India (via Lhasa and Sikkim).

One place that still feels Tibetan, however, is Tingri. Men drive horse-drawn carts ferrying villagers between market and home, women in faded homespun aprons bargain over butter prices and snot-nosed kids kick empty soda bottles along the edge of the streets. It is dusty and unswept, entirely devoid of white-tiled facades and blue-glass windows. I wonder why this little, old, crossroads trade-post hasn’t experienced the Chinese change. Maybe because New Tingri, just down the road and now called Shekar, is more or less yet another unrecognizable, Sinofied town.

The Qinghai-Tibet railway that opened in July 2006 heralded a huge step toward modernity for the Tibetan Plateau. Each day, the train runs from six major Chinese cities, converging thousands of passengers — mainland laborers, Han tourists and, to a small extent, foreign travelers — on Lhasa.

Far less publicized are the many trains that run north from Lhasa back to the mainland, groaning with raw materials such as iron ore and old growth lumber to fuel China’s prodigious growth. Reports say added to those loads are uranium extracted from Tibet’s Chang Tang wilderness.

The Chinese are extending the Tibetan rail line westward to Shigatse, Tibet’s second-largest city. The Nepali press reported that China offered to hasten the construction of a complementary line to Kathmandu. The rails in China’s far western Xinjiang Province already reach beyond Kashgar, close to the intersection of the Indian, Pakistan and Afghan borders.

What a strategic system it will be when, within a couple years, China’s railroad circumnavigates the Tibetan Plateau and connects with the great Xinjiang track, running nearly parallel to its border with nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, as well as the Russian-linked Central Asian states.

This will provide an ideal network to transport military as well as products and people between the mainland and China’s minority western provinces.

It is the new Silk Road, run by trains and trucks rather than camel caravans, and the good are no longer porcelain, silver and gunpowder, but plastics, copper and oil.

When the Tibet railway made its maiden voyage in 2006, a significant detail was absent from the media fanfare: The simultaneous reopening of the only commercial border-crossing between China and India via the Nathu La pass in Sikkim. Goods are transferred overland from Shanghai to Calcutta in less than a week: Two to three days by train to Lhasa followed by three to four days by road to India, far quicker and cheaper than the multiweek passage through the South China Seas and Singapore’s Malacca Straits.

The Nathu La stands to gain in prominence like the remote Khunjerab Pass that connects and feeds commerical traffic between northern Pakistan and China. The Khunjerab sits not far from the disputed Aksai Chin region. The Nathu La sits not far from the contested and increasingly militarized zone of Arunachal Pradesh. This mountainous Himalayan state, historically and culturally linked with Tibet, is at the center of a territorial tug of war between Beijing and Delhi because it is richly bio-diverse, borders Burma and holds serious potential for hydro-power. It is also stunningly beautiful.

In addition to linking the world’s two largest nations with a single commercial border, China has laid numerous roads across the Trans-Himalayan zone that traverse remote crossings once reserved for yak caravans. From Sino-Indian border-posts in far-Western Tibet at Rutok, to Nepali crossings at Mustang and Kyirong, at least a half-dozen highways near completion. It will not be long before paved roads spread their fingers from Tibet down to the southern plains of Nepal and into India.

Paving these historical trade routes is critical in the expansion of East- and South-Asian markets, an exploding bazaar that includes half of humanity — more than 3 billion people. And as with rail expansion, these roads strategically assist the military: Chinese troops stationed at frontier posts across Tibet can better monitor trade traffic increases and stand ready to deploy along China’s sensitive borders.

This report comes from a journalist in our Student Correspondent Corps, a GlobalPost project training the next generation of foreign correspondents while they study abroad.