The railway also brought coal, oil and gas into Tibet. Back before the railway era, many locals, especially herdsmen, used animal excrement and wood to warm their homes in the winter. Now people are using coal and gas and it's beneficial for the recovery and long-term protection of the region's forests and grasslands, Wang Yang, a member of the CRCC publicity department, said.
Locals have also benefited from the influx of business and job opportunities. In order to help locals break free from poverty, companies employed them in construction. The No.15 group of CRCC employed 7,520 Tibetan locals alone, said Wang. CRCC has also held 192 training classes and trained 6,003 Tibetans.
A local from Lhoka who performed well in the training sessions and learned how to operate machinery became a team leader during the railway construction, Wang said. He now has his own construction company and is leading locals in his town to work on housing projects.
In villages near Lhasa, the changes are rather obvious as well.
"I can't believe the yogurt, sheep and beef jerky that we usually eat can make loads of cash," Jampa, a local herdsman who lives in rural Lhasa told the Tibet Daily. After the railway started operating, he found many tourists came to the area with cameras around their necks.
A few years back, he and his family borrowed 30,000 yuan and set up a few tents to attract tourists. He earned more than 10,000 yuan within half a year. Jampa said this is more than he would make in a year herding sheep.
Strategic planning
The Qinghai-Tibet line was the first one of the five planned lines that has been built. It's also the most feasible out of the five, said Lin Lansheng, the then the vice chairman of the First Survey and Design Institute Group and chief engineer for the Qinghai-Tibet railway in the 1980s and 90s.
Traditionally, there are a few ways to travel by car from other provinces into Tibet from neighboring provinces, such as Yunnan and Sichuan, Lin said.
According to a report about Tibet's railway network released in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan in 2011, there are to be four railways going out of Lhasa, to Xinjiang, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan and one from Changdu, Tibet to Qinghai. The report said these railways will be constructed in three stages and are planned to be totally completed around 2050. When all of these railways are built, Tibet will have 8,895 kilometers of rail.
In 2013, the Sichuan-Tibet railway started construction. This year, a railway from Lhasa to Nyingchi is under construction. This section of railway will be a shared section of three planned railways, Sichuan-Tibet, Yunnan-Tibet and an extension of Qinghai-Tibet to Gansu Province.
The construction of the Sichuan-Tibet line has been difficult, because it climbs to an altitude of 14,000 meters. Because the line climbs through mountainous regions, the construction team has met with earthquakes, landslides, mudslides and even icy glaciers.
The Xinjiang-Tibet railway is expected to be the most difficult. Construction departments have been surveying the area for years, but still cannot find a way to make it possible as of now. The railway is expected to run alongside the No. 318 national highway.
The "One Belt, One Road" initiative has also affected railway construction in Tibet. Tibet is one of the major cities in China's southwest region and the railway net can bring the region closer to neighboring provinces.
A railway from Lhasa to Xigaze was finished in 2014 and within a year, it has brought Xigaze more than 300,000 tourists. At the end of 2014, when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Nepal, leaders from both countries reached an agreement on an extension of the Qinghai-Tibet railway to the borders of Nepal. Experts commented that this railway is expected to bring China closer to neighboring countries and bring economic development.
