CHINA: The first train from Beijing to Lhasa sets off for Tibet's snow- covered plateau tomorrow and Chinese tourists have been gearing up for an epic rail journey that has raised the hackles of both environmental groups and Tibetan activists.
For hundreds of years an isolated, mystical enclave ruled by red-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks, Lhasa has changed profoundly since Chinese troops entered in 1950 and started to impose the dominant Han Chinese culture on the ancient territory. The railway is the latest sign of profound change in Tibet.
The highest rail journey in the world will run 1,142km (710 miles) across the roof of the world, reaching vertiginous heights of more than 5,000m (16,400ft) at some stretches.
Some of the pricier carriages will be pressurised in case travellers get altitude sickness.
The railway took four years to build, cost €3.4 billion and will link Lhasa to Golmud, a small city in Qinghai province which is already connected to China's wide rail network. Most travellers now take long bus journeys or fly into Lhasa. The first train service from Beijing will take 48 hours to reach it.
President Hu Jintao will take the train tomorrow from the western city of Xining to Lhasa and the inaugural journey has been heralded with wild enthusiasm in the mass media as a triumph of Chinese engineering.
Tickets for the train sold out within 20 minutes of going on sale. Beijing says the rail link will give the poor region an economic boost by improving trade links with the prosperous east of the country.
Groups demanding more autonomy for the region say the train will bring even more Chinese migrants into Tibet, further diluting the indigenous culture and threatening to displace Tibetans in their own homeland.
Some 80,000 Tibetan exiles have been living in India since 1959, when their spiritual and political leader the Dalai Lama fled the country after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
Earlier this week, Tibetan exiles living in India demonstrated at the Chinese embassy in New Delhi and burned Chinese flags, saying the railway was a "death knell" for Tibet. The Tibetan Youth Congress described the link as an act of "demographic aggression" and claimed Beijing planned to use it to relocate 20 million Chinese in Tibet in the next 10 years.
China dismisses the criticisms and the deputy director of the rail project, Zhu Zhensheng, said the railway would improve the lives of Tibetans and promote their traditional culture.
"Tibetan culture needs to move forward and spread, and to do that it needs contact," he said. "I'm sure that an isolated setting doesn't help a culture to develop.
Environmental groups say the route could harm fragile highlands and warn that global warming could melt some of the permafrost that the railway line runs along.
Mr Zhu said the central government had gone to enormous lengths to protect the fragile environment and had allowed for the possible effects of global warming. Chinese engineers sank pipes with cooling elements into the ground around the tracks to stabilise embankments and ensure they stayed frozen.