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Railway to link Tibet
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THE construction of the first railway linking the Tibetan plateau with the rest of the country has been approved by the Chinese Government.
The 1,118km railway will extend from Lhasa, the capital city of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to Golmud in Qinghai Province in Northwest China. It will be the longest and most elevated railway built on highlands in the world.
President Jiang Zemin said that the construction of the railway is highly necessary. Premier Zhu Rongji said that the time was ripe for building the Qinghai-Tibet railway.
Zhu said that the railway will have great significance for accelerating economic and social development in Tibet, increasing economic and cultural exchanges between Tibet and the rest of the country and reinforcing unity among various ethnic groups.
Feasibility studies and planning of the construction of the railway are now underway. Zhu told a State Council meeting that the construction of the railway, a milestone project for China's develop-the-west campaign, should start as soon as possible.
More than 960 kilometres, or over four-fifths of the railway, will be built at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres. And more than half of it will be laid on earth that has been frozen for a long time.
China has been considering building the Qinghai-Tibet railway for over five decades. The rapid economic growth and technological advance over the past two decades have given the country enough national strength to complete the project.
The cost of the railway is estimated to reach 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion). According to Sun Yongfu, vice-minister of the Railway Ministry, the central government has earmarked 100 billion yuan for 28 railway construction projects in western regions over the next five years. This amount accounts for 40 per cent of the investment for the large and medium-sized infrastructure constructions during the 10th Five-year Plan.(SD-Xinhua)
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