China's new railway to Tibet has the potential to significantly alter the nation's trading and military relationships with South Asia, analysts say.
China promotes the line connecting the Tibetan capital of Lhasa with the rest of China, which opened on Saturday, as a key to developing the isolated Himalayan region known as the "roof of the world."
The government has already announced plans to extend the line from Lhasa to the edge of South Asia, with tracks to be laid all the way to the strategically important town of Yadong near the Indian border over the next decade.
Yadong, also known as Chomo in Tibet and Yatung in India, is 31km southwest of Lhasa, 100km from the Bhutanese capital Thimphu and 450km from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.
Observers say China's ability to access South Asia's markets will grow dramatically once the rail network has been expanded to Yadong, and even just the service from Lhasa would be of benefit.
"As China is one of the world's emerging economic powers, the new transportation service means that they will have an opportunity to dominate the South Asian market in the future," said Rajeshwor Acharya, an economist and former Nepalese ambassador to China.
"The flow of cheap Chinese goods will increase, which will have a negative impact on local industry in the South Asian countries."
In a sign of things to come, China and India will reopen on Thursday the Nathu La Himalayan pass, part of the famed Silk Road trading route, which had been closed since the two nations fought a brief border war in 1962.
The pass is just 30km from Yadong and has already been described by both countries as an important new avenue for bilateral trade.
However, not all in South Asia are fearful of China's expanding access to the region, with some in Nepal saying the kingdom will be able to reduce its trade dependence on India.
"It's a rosy prospect for Nepal to increase business with China," said Bijaya Ghimire, president of the business journalists' association in Nepal.
"So far Nepalese goods have only been able to reach the peripheral market of Tibet but with the operation of the railway, the products could penetrate the mainland China market," Ghimire said.
"At present 65 percent of Nepal's total international business including imports and exports is with India, whereas with China, it is less than 5 percent," Ghimire said
Some other analysts said the railway to Lhasa could be more of a concern for India on the military front rather than the economic one.
"It will significantly augment China's offensive military capability against India," said Brahma Chellany of the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research.
"At short notice, China will be able to intensify military pressure on India by rapidly mobilizing up to 12 divisions," Chellany said.
"The new railway facilitates the easy transport of intermediate-range missiles and would allow China to rail-base in Tibet some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles," Chellany said.
"China indeed has designed its latest ICBM, the DF-31A, as a rail-mobile weapon," Chellany said.
Rahul Bedi, correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly, said China was surrounding India by nurturing relations with Pakistan in the west, Bangladesh and Myanmar in the east and Sri Lanka in the south.
"If you join all the dots and look at Chinese activities in the region, it is effectively the Chinese encircling India -- using the ring of pearls strategy in the Indian Ocean region and a policy of encirclement in the mountainous area of Tibet," Bedi said.
However China stresses its peaceful intentions and its relations with India have improved in recent years, as evidenced by this week's reopening of the Nathu La pass.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS