At present, Tibet, which accounts for one-eighth of the country's total area, is the only place without a railroad among the 34 provinces, cities and districts in China, including Taiwan Province.
As early as the beginning of the founding of the country, Mao Zedong and other first-generation central leaders put the construction of a railroad into Tibet on the agenda. Since 1956, the Ministry of Railways has been carrying out pre-planning for the Tibet Railway, and in May 1974, the construction of the Xining-Germu section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (referred to as the "Xigue section") began, and was completed and handed over to the Lanzhou Railway Bureau for operation in May 1984, which was a phase one project of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
Because of the level of science and technology at that time and economic strength and other reasons, the second phase of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the Golmud-Lhasa section (referred to as the "Gela section") did not continue to build. However, the design exploration and engineering tests have never stopped.
On February 8 this year, the State Council approved the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. The second phase of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway starts from Golmud in the east and ends in Lhasa in the west, with a total length of 1,118 kilometers. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway is the world's highest altitude and the longest line of plateau railroad. There are 965 kilometers of sections at an altitude of 4,000 meters, and the highest point, Tanggula Pass, is 5,072 meters.
Besides the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, there are three other railroads into Tibet under planning, namely, the Gan-Tibet Railway, Yunnan-Tibet Railway and Sichuan-Tibet Railway. According to comparison and argumentation, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has unique advantages in terms of railroad length, total length and density of lines, bridges and tunnels, construction period and construction conditions. The total construction period of Qinghai-Tibet Railway is only 6 years (the other 3 lines are about 30 years or more), and the amount of investment is also the least one.
An important purpose of this project is to develop Tibet's tourism resources and promote local economic development. Tibet's tourism revenue accounts for more than 5 percent of the region's total income, and the number of tourists coming to Tibet in 1999 reached 450,000, and is expected to reach 1.13 million by 2010. However, due to the constraints of transportation, travel agencies are now organizing tours to Qinghai and Tibet at a very high cost, and only one item of transportation, a round-trip plane ticket from Beijing to Lhasa even if it is discounted is also more than 4,000 yuan, plus other costs, if a person wants to join a tour to Tibet, the cost is often higher than that of outbound tours. After the opening of this railroad, traveling to Tibet will be very convenient. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway will be built as a safe, fast, comfortable and all-weather fast channel in accordance with the principles of fast speed (140 kilometers per hour for trains), large intervals (one station for every 50 kilometers), and few maintenance personnel.