Inter Press Service
September 15, 2006

China has intensified its long-term quest to integrate the remote land and people of Tibet by building new infrastructure and drawing up plans to tap the Himalayan region’s virgin water sources and its rich reserves of copper, gold and hydrocarbons

Beijing: China has intensified its long-term quest to integrate the remote land and people of Tibet by building new infrastructure and drawing up plans to tap the Himalayan region’s virgin water sources and its rich reserves of copper, gold and hydrocarbons. … Perhaps one of the most controversial Chinese plans to tap Tibetan resources to date is Beijing’s new water scheme, called the “the big Western line”. Encouraged by the success of its civil engineering triumph with the Golmud-Lhasa railway, Chinese planners have come up with an even more audacious scheme to build a series of aqueducts, tunnels and reservoirs that would carry water from Tibet all the way to the parched plains of Northern China. The partly underground 300 km western line could eventually supply up to eight billion cubic metres of water a year from the Jinsha and other rivers in the Tibetan region, according to Li Guoying, head of the Yellow River Conservancy Commission. The water will also be used to feed the Yellow River’s upper reaches to feed rising industrial demand, Li told the media at a press briefing recently. Still, the project remains so controversial that no starting date has been announced