Protests as Tibet-China rail link opens

Jonathan Watts in Beijing

Tibet will be soldered to the rest of China tomorrow with the launch of a railway service across the Himalayan roof of the world.

But the controversy surrounding this engineering marvel was highlighted at Beijing station today when protesters unfurled a banner warning that the line would destroy the culture and environment of what, until recently, was one of the planet's most remote regions.

The first of what is expected to be a daily influx of 4,000 passengers will set off from the Chinese capital at 9.30am on a 48-hour journey to Lhasa, which will take them across mountain passes, alpine deserts and the vast plains of the Qinghai plateau. Some travellers are likely to require oxygen, which will be available under the seats, because of the thin air.

At its highest point, the railway hits an altitude of 5,072 metres (16,604ft), higher than the peak of any mountain in Europe and more than 200 metres higher than the Peruvian railway in the Andes, which was previously the world's highest track.

For the Chinese government, which is run by engineering graduates, the railway project is the latest in a series of triumphs of science over nature. In recent years, the country has built the world's biggest hydroelectric plant at the Three Gorges dam; launched two manned space flights, and begun construction of the world's tallest building and the world's longest bridge.

The track was completed a year ahead of schedule despite the technological difficulties posed by the permafrost under much of the terrain. President Hu Jintao, who will attend an opening ceremony in Golmud, in Qinghai province, hailed the project as "a colossal work unprecedented in railway history".

The railway was first envisaged in the 1950s by Mao Zedong at a time when People's Liberation Army troops were putting down a failed uprising by the Dalai Lama and his supporters.

Underlining its political symbolism, tomorrow's inauguration coincides with two other triumphal dates for the Chinese government: the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party and the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from British rule.

The Chinese media have hailed the economic benefits that the 34bn yuan (£2.4bn) railway will bring to one of the world's most impoverished regions in the form of cheaper freight costs and a doubling of tourist revenue. More than a million people are expected to use the line every year. Prices on the opening service range from 389 yuan (£28) for a "hard seat" to 1,262 yuan for a "soft sleeper." More expensive luxury carriages will be introduced later this year featuring pressurised cabins, gourmet dining and glass-walled viewing cars with ultraviolet filters to protect passengers from the strong sunlight at high altitude.

Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, has given a cautious welcome to the developmental benefits of the railway but warned that it could accelerate the "cultural genocide" taking place as his homeland is increasingly dominated by migrants from the majority Han Chinese ethnic group.

Three foreign protesters, including Katie Mallin from the UK, scaled the facade of the central railway station in Beijing and unfurled a banner reading "China's Tibet Railway: Designed to Destroy." They were detained for several hours and released.

"China's Tibet railway has been engineered to destroy the very fabric of Tibetan identity," Lhadon Tethong, a Tibetan and executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement put out after the demonstration. "China plans to use the railway to transport Chinese migrants directly into the heart of Tibet in order to overwhelm the Tibetan population and tighten its stranglehold over our people."

The group said it would demonstrate outside the Chinese embassies in at least six countries on Saturday as part of a campaign that will intensify in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic games in 2008.

Environmental groups, including the WWF and Traffic, have also warned that the Chinese government must do more to prevent the railway from worsening the fragile alpine ecology and the trade in endangered Himalayan animal skins. But the environment may prove a bigger risk to the railway. Chinese scientists warn that current rates of global warming could melt the ice under the tracks and threaten the operation the line within 15 to 45 years.