China's Discover Tibet Highway To Prosperity
Xinhua reported that there is no road as unique as the one connecting southwest China's Sichuan Province and the Tibet Autonomous Region in the history of the country, even the world. The 2,416 kilometer highway meanders through 13 snow-covered mountains over 4,000 meters high, crosses a dozen raging rivers, traverses eight world-class fault belts and countless swamps, permafrost areas, earthquake zones, landslide areas, glaciers and primeval forests. In 1950, about 110,000 people were summoned to build the road, with high morale but crude equipment. Over 4,000 had sacrificed their lives when the road was completed in 1954, ending the history of no modern highways in Tibet.
The Sichuan-Tibet highway serves as the artery linking the plateau region and China's inland areas, significantly alleviating the material shortage of Tibet over the past decades.
Due to the extreme plateau climate and frequent natural disasters, the highway is plagued by snowstorms, landslides, avalanches and earthquakes all year around, which is why it is called an "encyclopedia of highway distress." Qi Quanliang was a bus driver on the highway for 28 years before he retired in 2017. When he began working as a driver for the Nyingchi city passenger transport company in the early 1990s, it usually took him an entire day to arrive in Lhasa some 400 kilometer away.
He recalled "The roads were either paved by dirt or small stones, which made the bus very bumpy and prone to bursting tires. Sometimes we had to spend the night in the middle of nowhere."
As road conditions improve, traffic jams are now common, and most often they are not caused by bad weather or geological hazards. There are simply too many vehicles, cyclists and hikers. The Sichuan-Tibet region boasts one of the world's densest cultures and landscapes. Some world-class sceneries, such as the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, Midui Glacier and the Namcha Barwa Peak are by the roadside. In 2005, it was chosen as "China's most beautiful highway" by the Chinese National Geography magazine.
Besides the Sichuan-Tibet highway, three other highways starting from Qinghai, Yunnan and Xinjiang have been built and upgraded over the past decades due to the developmental need of Tibet. An expressway linking Sichuan and Tibet is also underway, with several sections already open to traffic. The Sichuan-Tibet railway, with an investment of 270 billion yuan, is under construction as well. All the projects would be unthinkable without the Sichuan-Tibet highway.
Mr Li Jian, an associate research fellow at China Tibetology Research Center, said that "The new railway will link Tibet, an important gateway to South Asia, with the developed regions in eastern and central China. As the economic tie between Tibet and inland provinces is getting closer, the increasingly modernized plateau region is poised to embrace the world."
Source : Xinhua