Saibal Dasgupta
The Times of India
April 9, 2015
China plans to build a 540-kilometre strategic high-speed rail link between Tibet and Nepal passing through a tunnel under Mt Everest, a move that could raise alarm in India about the Communist giant’s growing influence in its neighbourhood.
This is the first time a tunnel plan has been revealed because China had earlier discussed extending the Qinghai-Lhasa line to the Nepalese border without digging a tunnel.
“A proposed extension of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway to the China-Nepal border through Tibet would boost bilateral trade and tourism as there is currently no rail line linking the two countries,” state-run China Daily reported on Thursday.
“The line will probably have to go through Qomolangma so that workers may have to dig some very long tunnels,” railway expert Wang Mengshu told the China Daily, referring to Mount Everest by its Tibetan name.
The idea is to find a short route to Nepal in order to access the vast Indian market in a short time, sources said. China may be trying to involve Nepal in its Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar project because New Delhi has shown less enthusiasm for the BCIM project, they said.
The Lhasa line was extended to Xigaze, the second biggest city in Tibet, which is closer to the Nepalese border as Chinese authorities completed a 253-km long link railway line in August last year.
Restrained by rugged Himalayan mountains with its “remarkable” changes in elevation, trains on the line would probably have a maximum speed of 120 kmph.
A line of trekkers walk through fresh snow near the base of Mount Everest in the Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal. (Getty Images file photo)
The Nepal rail project which has been taken up at Kathmandu’s request will be completed by 2020, the newspaper cited a Tibetan official as saying. The project was discussed during the visit of Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, to Kathmandu in December, according to Nepalese reports.
“If the proposal becomes reality, bilateral trade, especially in agricultural products, will get a strong boost, along with tourism and people-to-people exchanges,” the railway expert said.
China has been scaling up its ties with Nepal much to the chagrin of India to stem the flow of Tibetans travelling through Nepal to meet the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala.
Beijing recently increased its annual aid to Nepal to USD 128 million from the previous USD 24 million.
In another move involving India’s neighborhood, China is likely to sign a deal to help Pakistan build a natural gas pipeline to Iran. The contract is expected to be signed during president Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to Islamabad.
