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Earlier this month, China established the Xinjiang-Xizang Railway Co Ltd, which state media described as a “significant step in the development of one of China’s most advanced transport projects”.
The planned railway is important because it will connect two historically restive Chinese border regions adjoining each other — the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the northwest, and Tibet, officially Xizang Autonomous Region, in the south of the country.
Both autonomous regions are large, have unique demographics, and harsh terrain and climatic conditions that make the construction of infrastructure projects challenging. Increasing access inside these regions, however, has been an important Chinese policy goal in recent decades. The proposed line will run close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The plan to connect Xinjiang with Tibet has been mentioned in Chinese official documents for years, and is part of China’s policy to boost rail infrastructure in the region.
China opened the high-elevation Qinghai-Tibet Railway in 2006, linking Tibet with the rest of the country by rail for the first time. The line, the highest in the world, is a remarkable feat of engineering — according to the government, about 85% of the route passes at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres, where the average annual temperature is below zero, and air oxygen content is only 50-60% of the standard in lowland areas.
The Xinjiang-Xizang line will run “from Hotan in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to Shigatse and Lhasa in Xizang”, and will be “part of China’s five planned railway corridors into Xizang”, a report in China Daily said.
Suyash Desai, a Non-Resident Fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, who studies China’s defence, foreign, and nuclear policies, said that a larger connectivity loop is planned across these regions. “The Hotan-Shigatse railway line will be one part of a route that goes around Tibet-Xinjiang, Southern and Central Xinjiang, and Golmud in Qinghai province,” Desai said.
The railways constitute one layer of this connectivity loop; the other is an extensive road network. The new company has a registered capital of $13.22 billion, but the estimated cost of the project remains unknown.
The project has multiple aims, from facilitating the movement of soldiers to harnessing untapped economic potential in these regions.
“China has been engaged in a lot of big-ticket projects for decades, but its minority regions still have the capacity to absorb additional infrastructure,” said Jabin Jacob, associate professor at the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies at Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida. “It is also about knitting together far-flung, politically unstable, economically weak provinces more strongly to the central authority, and is intended to generate easier population movement into these provinces”, he said.
Desai pointed out that the railways, which now extend to many far-flung regions, facilitate the large-scale mobilisation of troops and movement of defence equipment. This military objective is important in the desert-like parts of Xinjiang, where the conventional economic incentive for investment is not strong.
“When you bring development, the restiveness in these regions could go away,” Desai said. “This has happened to an extent, with jobs bringing a noticeable element of prosperity in eastern Tibet in particular. Historically, these regions have lagged behind the more prosperous eastern coast of China,” he said.
The minority Muslim Uyghurs and Buddhist Tibetans have long been subjected to an official policy of “Sinicisation”, or a centering of the cultural practices of the majority ethnic Han Chinese.
The state has typically employed a carrot-and-stick approach towards these populations, which has ensured that no major protests or uprising-like incidents have occurred in more than a decade and a half, Desai said.
Jacob said this relative calm suggests that “draconian measures such as constant surveillance, destruction of religious sites and control of places of worship, have succeeded to a large extent”.
“Infrastructure development in minority regions is part of the effort to reorient their economic development towards centrally directed pathways, to improve control, and ‘Sinicise’ under pressure of both state control and Han migration into these regions,” he said.
These infra projects picked up steady pace about two decades ago. “China started looking towards its western region with a “Go West” strategy in 2000. They identified 12 provinces for attention, including these two (Xinjiang and Tibet),” Desai said.
Official data show that between 2000 and 2016, the government invested 6.35 trillion yuan ($914 billion) in 300 major projects, mostly in the infrastructure and energy sectors, in China’s western region.
As it emerged strongly as a global economic force, China started to take a more assertive approach all-round. “Earlier, they largely believed in the philosophy of “hide your capability and bide your time” propounded by [the architect of China’s economic miracle] Deng Xiaoping,” Desai said. The assertiveness crystallised and became more conspicuous after Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he said. Among the reforms that were introduced in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was a stronger focus on the western region.
The new railway could pass through Aksai Chin. Though lagging behind China, India has made an infrastructure push of its own over the last several years, including after the 2020 Galwan clash. In 2023, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated 90 border infrastructure projects, from a tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh to a military airfield in Ladakh.
