Repaving of Xinjiang-Tibet
highway first time in 50 years
Chinese officials have said they
are close to completing the repaving of the Xinjiang-Tibet national highway,
which runs through the disputed Aksai Chin region, for the first time in 50
years.
Repaving of the Xinjiang section,
which runs through the Aksai Chin region that India holds claims to, will be
completed next month, local authorities in Yecheng county of the Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region (XUAR) were quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news
agency on Wednesday.
This marks the first repaving in
the road’s 50-year history, according to Ma Zhixin, the deputy head of
Yecheng’s road administration bureau.
Construction of the road began in
1951, and its completion in 1957 caught India by surprise, triggering tensions
ahead of the 1962 conflict.
According to Xinhua, the repaving
began in September 2010 and cost three billion yuan ($476 million).
The 2,143-km road runs from
Yecheng county in Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang south to Lhatse in the Tibet
Autonomous Region (TAR).
The Aksai Chin region is
administered by China under the Hotan prefecture in Xinjiang.
The Xinjiang section of the road
is 654.8 km in length. It is regarded as the highest traversable road in the
world.
The national road is of strategic
significance to China, both as the only link to its military outposts on its
remote far-western border and as the most feasible land connection between
Xinjiang and Tibet.
The repaving is part of a plan to
upgrade road and rail infrastructure across the less developed western regions.
While officials say the objective is to primarily boost development and bridge
the gap with the more prosperous east, the plans have also stirred interest in
India as they will widen the asymmetry in infrastructure across the disputed
western section of the border.
Last year, the government opened
a new rail link between Xinjiang and Tibet that shortened the distance between
the two regional capitals, Urumqi and Lhasa, by more than 1,000 km. The
government opened more than 5,000 km of new highway in TAR in 2011, and will
add 8,000 km of railway lines in Xinjiang in the next Five-Year Plan, according
to official reports.
Courtesy:
The Hindu
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