Why all this fuss for a few Indian tunnels?

Rongme Ngatra Tunnel, stretching 13 kms on National Highway No 317

The meaning of ‘double standards’ is unknown in China.
After The Economic Times reported that India plans to construct 17 highway tunnels totaling 100 kilometers along the line of actual control, The Global Times bitterly complained.
The Party mouthpiece quoted Xie Chao, an ‘expert’ at Tsinghua University's Department of International Relations, who said that: “boosting border infrastructure has been Indian's consistent policy.”
A poor joke, when one knows the reality.
Another ‘expert’, Zhao Gancheng, director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies stated that "the tunnel building along the border is a further fermentation after the Doklam standoff."
He reiterated China’s baloney stand: “One June 18, Indian troops illegally crossed the border and trespassed into Chinese territory in Doklam.”
Fermentation or not, India is far behind China in the field of infrastructure.
Zhao dared to tell The Global Times: “Although some Indian senior officials made a friendly gesture toward China after the standoff, India has pursued its previous policy along the border - developing infrastructure as well as troop mobility.”
The Global Times commented; “The Indian government is playing two cards over the border issue, the situation of which will be a ‘new normal’ for the China-India border.”
Xie Chao warned: "It is the Chinese government's responsibility to safeguard border safety and China won't take the initiative to seek military force to tackle border problems. But a balanced force along the border will make China cope with the tensions."
Is it not ‘double standards’?
While India is 20 or 30 years behind China is terms of development of border infrastructure, the slightest improvement on the Indian side is shown by Beijing and its ‘experts’ as an aggressive move.

Infrastructure on the Tibetan side
Just read the Chinese press, you will understand.
On October 28, China Tibet News announced that the newly-built runway of Chamdo Bangda Airport was officially put into use, “ushering in a new period of rapid growth.”
A total of 19,000 flights took off or landed at Bangda Airport; it boasts of 1.876 million passenger throughput. The new runaway will improve further the traffic: “In 2015, with a total investment of 849 million yuan [150 million US dollars], the airfield renovation project was started and it was built on 4C standard,” said the website.
Chamdo Bangda Airport has already flights to Lhasa, Chengdu, and Chongqing; soon planes will be able to fly to Tianjin, Fujian, and other Mainland cities.
At the same time, the reconstruction project of the highway from Shigatse Peace Airport to Shigatse City has begun, Shigatse will become “a comprehensive transportation hub”.
It will be an important part “for Tibet's export-oriented economic development,” said the website. Practically it will be a next stage towards opening a road and railway to Nepal.
According to China Tibet News: “After this project is completed, it will improve the regional traffic conditions and play a key role in meeting Tibet's high grade highway demand.”

On October 23, another website, China Tibet Online affirmed: “China's central government continues to increase support for infrastructure construction in southwest China's Tibet and Tibetan-inhabited areas in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan Province, striving to break the bottleneck that constraints the social development and people's livelihood improvement in those regions.”
According to the Chinese website: “Since 2012, Tibet has opened the Lhasa-Shigatse Railway, and the Lhasa-Nyingchi Railway also enters its construction, starting a new era in railway construction. Highway distance increased from 62,500 kilometers in 2012 to 82,100 kilometers in 2016, an increase of 25.9 percent. There are 71 domestic and international air routes connecting Tibet with 41 cities.”
And the list goes on.

Developments in Tibetan-inhabited areas
The fast-track infrastructure development is not limited to the Tibetan Autonomous Region; it extends to the Tibetans-inhabited provinces.
So why this fuss for a few Indian tunnels, which will take years to materialize?
In the power fields too, giant steps are taken on the plateau.
China Tibet Online provides details on the Sichuan-Tibet Power Interconnection Project which has recently been put into operation, “eliminating serious power shortages in Chamdo City in the Tibet and the southern part of the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China's Sichuan Province. The total power installation capacity is 2.65 million kilowatts, 1.3 times more than that in 2012.”
It is said that it for the first time Tibet achieved net electric power transmission of 200 million kilowatts hour outwards.

More infrastructure in Sichuan
The same website further asserts that “Sichuan implemented two rounds of the ‘three-year transportation battle’, while completing and opening the Yading airport in the Daocheng County in Garze and the Hongyuan airport in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, construction on the Gesar Airport in Garze, the Chengdu-Lanzhou Railway, the Chengdu-Ya'an part of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway and the Ya'an-Kangding as well as Wenchuan-Markham Highways have also begun. At the end of 2016, the total distance of the highway in Tibetan-inhabited areas in Sichuan reached 45,200 kilometers.”
Does India complain each time, China open a dual-use airport on the plateau?

In Yunnan too
At the same time, in Yunan Province, “1,142 projects have been completed of the 1,344 major projects implemented over the last five years, and a total of 103.9 billion yuan (15.7 billion US dollars) have been invested.” While Gansu Province opened in 2013 the Xiahe Airport and the Linxia-Hezuo Highway, respectively the first civil aviation airport and the first highway in its Tibetan-habited areas, the first railway line, from Lanzhou to Hezuo, has also been under construction in 2016. There are currently 10,046 kilometers of highway, and 95 percent of villages are accessible to modern transportation in the Tibetan-inhabited areas.”
The highway coverage in Tibetan-inhabited areas of Qinghai Province reached 65,117 kilometers in 2016, increasing by 11,367 compared with 2012. The 251 townships and 1,659 villages in its Tibetan-inhabited areas are all accessible to highways.
This is not called ‘double standards’ when so-called experts complained after India struggling to provide genuine communication facilities for the border population in the Himalaya.

In the meantime, a combined army brigade under the PLA's 77th Group Army (former 13th Group Army) practiced at an altitude of 4,700 meters on the plateau area on November 7, 2017.
India is not making a fuss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Airport infrastructure on the Tibetan Plateau

In 2015, a statement of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) asserted: "Safeguarding national unity and strengthening ethnic unity should be highlighted in work involving Tibet."
It added that: "Efforts should be made to unswervingly carry out the anti-separatism battle, promote the region's economic and social development, safeguard and improve people's welfare, and enhance exchanges and integration of different ethnic groups."
The Politburo's priorities were to strength Tibetan infrastructure, which in turn will help fostering competitive industries while ensuring environmental protection "to achieve marked improvement in living conditions and more social cohesion."
The PLA/Civil integration of the airports in Tibet greatly helps Beijing to 'strengthen the infrastructure' and consolidate its presence on the Plateau, i.e. 'to stabilize Tibet' and be ready in case of a conflict with India.
In 2015, a joint statement from the People Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and General Administration of Civil Aviation (CAAC) affirmed that the integration would include joint maintenance of airport support facilities, joint flight safety support and joint airport management.
Interestingly, the Lhasa Gongkar Airport in Tibet and Sunan Shuofang International Airport in  Wuxi in Jiangsu province, were selected as the first two pilot PLA/civil airports to implement the 'integration' in China.
The PLAAF/CAAC circular further affirmed that "All the civil-military airports will conduct strengthened integration next year."
Apart from the strategic aspect, according to Xinhua: "Tibet welcomed a record 20 million tourists in 2015. ...This generated 28 billion yuan (4.26 billion U.S. dollars) in tourism revenue, nearly three times the figure in 2010. ...Regional capital Lhasa saw its tourism revenue more than triple over the past five years to an estimated 15.49 billion yuan in 2015. The number of tourists visiting the city rose by a yearly average of 23.32 percent in the period to 11.79 million in 2015."

In this context, it is interesting to draw a list all the major airpiorts on the Tibetan plateau.

List of Airports in the TAR

Lhasa Gonggar Airport 
Lhasa Gonggar Airport is the airport serving Lhasa, the capital city of the Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It is located about 62 kilometres (39 mi) southwest of the city in Gonggar County of Shannan (Lhoka) Prefecture. The airport is close to the road to Tsetang, the capital of Shannan Prefecture.
At an elevation of 3,570 metres (11,710 ft), Lhasa Airport is one of the highest airports in the world. The airport was built in 1965, a second runway was built in 1994 and terminal facilities were upgraded in 2004.

Ngari Gunsa Airport
Ngari Gunsa Airport is a dual-use military and civil airport serving the town of Shiquanhe (Ali or Gar) in Ngari Prefecture, in the southwest of China's Tibet Autonomous Region near the Indian border. It started its operations on July 1, 2010, becoming the fourth civil airport in Tibet after Lhasa, Nyingchi [Nyingtri], and Chamdo airports.
Situated at 4,274 m (14,022 ft) above sea level, Gunsa Airport is the third highest airports in the world after Chamdo Bangda Airport (elevation 4,334 m (14,219 ft)) and Kangding Airport (elevation 4,280 m (14,042 ft)). Gunsa airport has a 4,500-meter runway. It is expected to handle 120,000 passengers by 2020. Construction began in May 2007 and cost an estimated 1.65 billion yuan (241.22 million U.S. dollars).

Nyingtri Mainling Airport
Nyingchi Mainling Airport is an airport in Mainling, Nyingchi Prefecture. It is one of the most challenging landing ground in the world, since the airport is in a winding valley.
Nyingchi Airport is the third airport that Tibet has put into operation. Built at a cost of 97 million U.S. dollars: this includes investment by the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC)
The airport is 2,949 meters above sea level, with a designed annual passenger flow of 120,000.

Chamdo Bamda Airport
Chamdo Bamda Airport is located in Bamda near Chamdo.
The airport is the highest airport in the world, at an elevation of 4,334 metres (14,219 ft) and has the longest paved runway in the world, with a length of 5.5 km.
The low air density at this altitude makes a higher takeoff and landing true airspeed necessary, and therefore a longer runway. Also, the aircraft's engines produce less thrust at higher elevation than near sea-level.
The airport is 2.5 hours by mountain road from the county seat of Chamdo. The long commute is the result of no flat land closer to the city being available to construct an airport.

Shigatse Peace Airport
Shigatse Peace Airport or Shigatse Air Base, is a dual-use military and civilian airport serving Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet Autonomous Region.
It is located in Jiangdang Township, 43 kilometers from Shigatse. With an elevation of 3,782 metres (12,408 ft), it is one of the highest airports in the world.
Construction of Shigatse Airport started in 1968 and was completed in 1973. It was solely for military use until 2010, when a 95 million US dollars expansion was completed. On 30 October 2010, the airport was opened as the fifth civilian airport in Tibet.

Nagchu Dagring Airport
Nagqu [Nagchu] Dagring Airport is an airport under construction near Nagchu in the Nagchu Prefecture of Tibet. When completed (later in 2015?), it will be the highest airport in the world at 4,436 m (14,554 ft), surpassing Chamdo Bangda Airport as the highest. Construction began in 2011 and is scheduled to take three/four years. The airport is part of a Chinese government development scheme to build 97 airports across China by 2020. By then, the authorities intend that four-fifths of China's population will be within a 90-minute drive of an airport.

Choedrak inspecting the site of the second airport in Lhasa

Second Lhasa Airport
On September 7, 2014, it was reported that the Lhasa Party’s Secretary Qizha (or Choedrak in Tibetan) went for an inspection tour on the site of the new airport.
The Tibet Daily said that preliminary planning and design work were carried out. Choedrak asked the people to fully understand the practical significance of the construction of this new airport.
The Township of Lhasa attaches “great importance to further strengthening the organization by building a first-class international airport,” he said.

List of airports in Sichuan Province
In Tibetan areas

Kangding Airport 
Kangding Airport is an airport serving Kangding, capital of the Gartse Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in western Sichuan Province, China. It is located 40 kilometers northwest of the city center. Construction of the airport began in September 2006 and the airport started operation on April 26, 2009.
Situated at 4,280 m (14,042 ft) above sea level, Kangding Airport is the third highest airport in the world behind Daocheng Yading Airport and Chamdo Bamda Airport, and just higher than Ngari Gunsa Airport (elevation 4,274 m (14,022 ft)).

Hongyuan Airport (Ngaba)
In 2014, Xinhua reported, "Southwest China's Sichuan Province opened its fourth high-altitude airfield, which local officials hope will boost tourism in the heavily Tibetan-populated region."
According to the official news agency, the new Hongyuan Airport is located in Aba [Ngaba] Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture at an elevation of 3,535 meters.
The Prefecture is situated in northwestern Sichuan, at the border of Gansu and Qinghai provinces.
Ngaba (or Aba in Chinese) was the epicenter of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which over 20,000 of local residents died.
The area has also been the epicenter of the wave of Tibetan self-immolations in 2011 and 2012.
While half of the 'Tibetan' self-immolations happened in Ngaba Prefecture, very few of them happened in Tibet Autonomous Region.

Daocheng Yading Airport
The 4,411-metre-high Kardze Daocheng Yading airport, being built in Kardtse (Garze), it became the world’s highest civilian airport when put into operation in 2014 (a year earlier than planned!!).
The Civil Aviation Administration said that its main purpose is to boost local tourism.
The Yading airport cost of 245 million US dollars. The Sichuan authorities plan to bring one million tourists (and get 1.5 billion yuan revenue!) by 2015. A quick return on investment!
But as important as tourism, the airport will facilitate the transportation of fresh troops from the Military Area Command in Chengdu to Kardtse prefecture in a short time. It has been one of the most restive areas on the Tibetan plateau.
The new Kardze Yading airport will greatly facilitate the transportation of PAP's reinforcements in case of unrest. With one stone, two birds are killed: the Tibetan protesters are 'pacified' and the deluge of Chinese tourists brings hefty revenues.

Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport
Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport also known as Jiuzhaigou Airport is an airport in Songpan County of Sichuan Province.
This airport serves two major scenic places of interest in this area, namely Huanglong, 53 kilometres away, and Jiuzhaigou, 88 km away. It is 3,448 metres (11,312 ft) above sea level.
Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport is about 240 km or 40 minutes flight from Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, an aviation hub of Southwest China. It started flights on September 28, 2003, and has one runway of length 3,200 m and width 60 m.

In Qinghai Province
Tibetan areas

The Huatugou aviation Airport
A few months ago, Xinhua reported that Qinghai Province will be home to another airport. The Huatugou aviation airport, presently under-construction, is being built in the Mongolian-Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Haixi.
The Qinghai Airport Company said the airport will cover an area of 180 hectares and it will cost 114 million U.S. dollars.
It is a big investment for a Prefecture which, according the 2010 census, has 489,338 inhabitants only. The airport will have a 3,600 meters runway and a terminal covering an area of some 3,000 square meters, which is relatively small. The airport is expected to be completed within a year.

Delingha Airport 
Delingha Airport is an airport serving Delingha City, the capital of the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, China. The airport is located 29 kms southwest of the city center, on the south bank of Bayin River.
Construction began on 27 May 2011, with a total investment of 630 million yuan. The airport was opened on 16 June 2014, with the inaugural flight China Eastern Airlines MU2241 from Xining Caojiabao Airport. Delingha is the fourth civil airport in Qinghai.
Delingha has been one of the sites used by China to launch its missiles.

Golok Airport (under construction)
The Qinghai Airport Co. authorities announced that a new civil airport will open on the Tibetan Plateau by the end of 2015.
It is located in Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province.
The airport has been built at an altitude of 3,500 meters.
It has a 3,800-meter-long runway and a 3,000-square-meter terminal.
The construction is expected to be completed by the end of October.
The announcement had to be made now, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (though Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is located in Qinghai).
By the end of 2015, flights from Golok to Xining, Lhasa, and Chengdu will be introduced.
It will be the sixth civilian airport in Qinghai province and the first in Golok.

The Yushu Batang Airport
The Yushu Batang Airport is the airport serving Yushu City in Qinghai Province, China. It is located 18 kilometers to the south of the city center, Gyêgu [Jyekundo], at the 3,890 meters elevation about the sea level, which makes it the highest civilian airport in Qinghai Province, and one of the highest in the world.
The construction of the airport started in 2007. The first aircraft landed at the new airport on May 29, 2009, and the airport was officially opened on August 1, 2009.
It can receive A319 aircraft. The passenger terminal is designed to serve up to 80,000 passengers per year. According to the CAAC statistics, the airport served 7,484 passengers during 2009, the first year of its operation.
The airport played an important role in the delivery of rescue personnel and relief supplies to the area affected by the 2010 Yushu earthquake.

In Gansu Province
Tibetan areas

Gannan Xiahe Airport
Gannan Xiahe Airport is an airport in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, China. It is located in Xiahe County, 72 kilometers from the county seat and 56 kilometers from Hezuo, the capital of Gannan Prefecture. Construction started in September 2010 with a total investment of 722 million yuan, and the airport was opened on 19 August 2013.

In Yunnan Province
Tibetan areas

Diqing [Dechen] Shangri-La Airport
Diqing Shangri-La Airport is an airport serving Shangri-La City, Diqing [Dechen] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China.
Accorging to the Chinese propaganda, "Shangri-la, a place where the majority people believe in Tibetan Buddhism, is full of religious atmosphere amid the sutra streamers everywhere.Shangri-la has an area of 11,613 square kilometers populated with near 130,000 people who are mainly Tibetans."
It is one of the main sites on the plateau for 'Tibet tourism' where hundreds of thousands of Chinese visitors rush every year in search of some exoticism.

In Xinjiang Province

Hotan Airport
Hotan Airport is an airport serving Hotan, a city in the autonomous region of Xinjiang in the People's Republic of China.

List of airports in Sichuan Province
At the periphery of the Tibetan plateau

Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport
Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport, also known as Jiuzhaigou Airport is an airport in Songpan County.
This airport serves two major scenic places of interest in this area, namely Huanglong, 53 kilometres away, and Jiuzhaigou, 88 km away. It is 3,448 metres (11,312 ft) above sea level.
It is located about 240 km or 40 minutes flight from Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, an aviation hub of Southwest China. It started flights on September 28, 2003, and has one runway of length 3,200 m and width 60 m.

Panzhihua Bao'anying Airport
Panzhihua Bao'anying Airport is the airport serving the city of Panzhihua in China's Sichuan province. The airport was opened in December 2003. Construction of the airport began in 2000 and cost a total of 1.1 billion yuan. The airport was closed on 25 June 2011 after a major landslide, and was reopened on 29 June 2013 after two years of repair.

Guangyuan Panlong Airport
Guangyuan Panlong Airport is an airport serving Guangyuan, Sichuan province.

Guanghan Airport
Guanghan Airport is an airport southeast of Guanghan. Formerly a military airfield, known as Kwanghan Airfield (A-3) during World War II, it is now used by Civil Aviation Flight University of China for pilot training.

Yibin Caiba Airport
Yibin Caiba Airport is a dual-use military and civil airport serving the city of Yibin in southern Sichuan Province of China. Located in the town of Caiba in Cuiping District, the airport was expanded twice in 1991 and 1993.
In 2011 Yibin Caiba Airport served 326,000 passengers, a 12.4% increase over the previous year, and 2,737.6 tons of cargo. As the airport's current location limits its capability to expand, in May 2012 the State Council of China approved the building of the new Yibin Wuliangye Airport to replace Caiba Airport.

Luzhou Lantian Airport
Luzhou Lantian Airport is an airport serving the city of Luzhou in Sichuan Province. Luzhou Airport was built in 1945 and initially served an air route between China and India by the US Air Force during the World War II. Services were suspended in the 1960s, but later it was used for training purposes by the Chinese Air Force. Major renovations and expansions were completed in January 2001.

Xichang Qingshan Airport
Xichang Qingshan Airport is an airport serving Xichang, the capital city of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. The airport started an expansion project in February 2010.

Nanchong Gaoping Airport

Mianyang Nanjiao Airport is an airport serving the city of Mianyang in Sichuan Province, China. It is located in the southern suburbs of Mianyang (Nanjiao means "southern suburbs" in Chinese), 10 kilometers from the city center.
Opened on 28 April 2001, Mianyang Nanjiao is the second largest airport in Sichuan after Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport. The airport is also used for pilot training by the Civil Aviation Flight University of China.
In 2011 Mianyang Nanjiao Airport served 622,816 passengers, ranking 66th among China's airports. It also handled 4,491.5 tons of cargo and 207,140 aircraft movements.

In Qinhai Province
At the periphery of the Tibetan plateau

Xining Caojiabao Airport 
Xining Caojiabao Airport is an airport serving Xining, capital of Qinghai Province, China. It is located in Huzhu County, Haidong, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of downtown Xining. The airport began operation in 1991, and in October 2011 a new 3,800 meter long runway was built to replace the old one.

In Yunnan Province
At the periphery of the Tibetan plateau

Dali Airport
Dali Airport is an airport in Dali (actually Xiaguan) in Yunnan Province.

Lijiang Sanyi Airport
Lijiang Sanyi Airport is an airport serving Lijiang, Yunnan province, China.
Built in 1995, the civil airport is 25 km to the south of the city proper.
The airport has one runway of 3,000 metres in length with turning bases at both ends of the runway.
Tibet Airlines recently opened a new air route, a daily service from Chongqing to Lijiang.

Dehong Mangshi Airport
Dehong Mangshi Airport is an airport serving Mang City in Dehong, Yunnan Province. It was formerly called Luxi Mangshi Airport.

Baoshan Yunduan Airport
Baoshan Yunduan Airport is an airport in Baoshan in Yunnan.

Lincang Airport
Lincang Airport is an airport serving the city of Lincang in Yunnan province, southwestern China. The airport started operation on March 25, 2001. The airport is 22.5 km from the center of the city in the town of Boshang.

Tengchong Tuofeng Airport 
Tengchong Tuofeng Airport is an airport serving Tengchong County in Yunnan Province. It is located near Tuofeng Village 12 kilometers south of the county seat. The airport was opened on 16 February 2009.

In Xinjiang Province

Qiemo Airport
Qiemo Airport is an airport serving Qiemo Town and the rest of Qiemo County, in the Bayin'gholin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.

Kashgar Airport
Kashgar Airport, also known as Kashi Airport, is an airport serving Kashgar (also known as Kashi), a city in Uyghur autonomous region of Xinjiang in the People's Republic of China.

Grid and Greed

As mentioned in this article from the National Geographic Correspondent on Water issues, India "suffers from inertia on one hand and from destructive greed on the other. It doesn’t suffer from a shortage of dams"
But there are other related issues which complicate the situation.
Of course, great is the temptation to built new dams, under the pretext to 'produce more', in reality to mint more money like in the Arunachal Pradesh case.
An article in Nature China warns us: "Climate change: Melting ice before your eyes".
Glaciologist Tandong Yao at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues say: "Glaciers in the Himalayas have shrunk over the past 30 years", adding: 

The Tibetan Plateau holds one of the largest numbers of glaciers in the world. These glaciers are at the headwaters of many prominent Asian rivers and play important roles in local ecosystems. Recently, however, controversy has raged as to whether glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau are experiencing shrinkage due to global climate change.

Tandong Yao studied differences in status of 7,090 glaciers between the 1970s and 2000s using topographic maps, satellite images and on-site observations. They found that the Himalayas (excluding the Karakorum) experienced the most intensive shrinkage, and that the extent of shrinkage decreases from the Himalayas to the continental interior. 
Interestingly they warned: "if glacier shrinkage continues in the Himalayas, downstream regions could experience unsustainable alterations to water supplies and growing incidences of geohazards."
Even more worrying is the desertification of the Tibetan plateau.
According to Xinhua, as a result of global warming the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is being threatened by desertification on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau .

Photo: Nature China

Wang Jinchang, a senior engineer with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company told the Chinese news agency that about 443 kilometers of the 1,956-km railway are in areas affected by desertification, including 103 km that lie in seriously desertified areas.
Wang affirmed that the threat of soil erosion has grown very fast in recent years, mostly near rivers and wetlands from Golmud and Lhasa, and the amount of affected rail tracks almost doubled from 2003 to 2009.
Another expert in soil erosion control, An Fengjie, from China's State Forestry Administrations stated that the plateau region suffered from desertification long before the railway was built: "The railway did not cause the problem, but it gives us an opportunity to witness the severity and scale of soil erosion on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau." 
The Chinese will not admit that the railway line made the situation worse. It appears that sands buried rail racks and disrupted train services over 1,362 times from 1984 to 2002 on the Xining-Golmud section of the railway.
Xinhua says that one of the most prevalent theories blames global warming for the ecological deterioration in the plateau region.
According to Sun Zhizhong, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau rose over two degrees Celsius on average over the past three years, leaving large chunks of frozen earth to defrost.
One of the consequences is that the Kokonor (or Qinghai Lake), China's largest saltwater lake keeps expanding.
For a long time, this phenomenon remained unexplained.
Xinhua reported yesterday: "The surface area of China's largest inland saltwater lake has been expanding for eight years, according to the latest remote sensing survey."
Zhou Bingrong, deputy chief of the provincial institute of meteorological sciences found out that:

The Qinghai Lake in northwest China's Qinghai province measured 4,354.28 square km, according to satellite data collected on July 19 and published on Sunday, s. The figure was 14.58 square km larger than the same time last year, and the largest in 12 years.

Zhou's institute has been carrying out dynamic surveillance of the lake's surface area since 2001, when the lake was shrinking due to climate change and human activity. 
Zhou takes the credit for the increase of the lake: "We have noticed an apparent increase of water since 2005, thanks to more rainfall and sustained environmental protection efforts," but the increase in the waters filling up the lake is more likely to be due to climate change and melting of permafrost".
The Qinghai Lake had been shrinking since the 1950s, but now is increasing.

India is bound to have new black-outs, if new measures as the ones suggested by Himanshu Thakkar in the article below are not urgently taken.
But is there the will to bring out meaningful changes.
The problem is that these measures may not fill the politicians pockets, while building new dams will do. 
It may be difficult for the grid to prevail over the greed.
There is another angle to the blackout: computer hackers.
In August 2003, a blackout occurred in North America, leaving 50 million people in the dark for four days.
Bloomberg wrote: "[it] provides a glimpse of the havoc a cyber attack could inflict on the nation’s power grid." 
Adding: "Internet-based terrorists would be capable of causing blackouts “on the order of nine to 18 months” by disabling critical systems such as transformers, said Joe Weiss, managing director of Applied Control Solutions LLC, a Cupertino, California-based security consulting company."
Apparently the 2003 event was triggered when a power line touched tree branches in Ohio; it ultimately caused losses of as much as $10 billion, according to a study by the U.S. and Canadian governments.
According to Bloomberg that: "Energy companies including utilities would have to increase their investment in computer security more than seven-fold to reach an ideal level of protection."
A Bloomberg survey of network managers at 21 energy companies found that companies spend an average of $45.8 million a year on computer security and are able to prevent 69 percent of known cyber strikes against their systems.
It is quite ominous!
Though in the case of India, external hackers are not required. Undisciplined Electricity Boards will continue to do the job.


India’s Massive Blackout, and the Environmental Danger to Come
Dan Morrison
National Geographic News Correspondent in Water Currents 
July 31, 2012
An estimated 600 million Indians – more people than live in western Europe — were without electricity today, victims of a massive blackout that darkened most of the northern and eastern portions of the country.
The Great Indian Outage, stretching from New Delhi to Kolkata, comes just a day after 300 million people in northern India lost power for much of Monday.
It is a disaster that’s caused untold damage to India’s economy, its prestige, and its well-being – think of the millions of patients in hospitals, the commuters stuck on trains, and farmers in need of irrigation. Hundreds of miners in the states of West Bengal and Jharkand were trapped underground by the blackout. Some 300 trains were reportedly stalled across the country.
There’s more damage to come, I fear: Forces that have been bridling against environmental regulations and science-based activism will use the Great Outage as a cudgel to demolish future restraints on dam construction, coal mining, and other projects.
India’s humiliating power failure is sure to birth a slogan as reductive and wrong as America’s own “Drill Baby Drill.”
The irony is that this outage was likely caused in part by mismanagement at the Bhakra series of hydroelectric dams in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh states in northern India, according to Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.
“Had these dams been operated more rationally, keeping in mind the emerging realities and forecasts, the situation in Northwest India would have been different,” Thakkar told me. “Higher [water] levels in these dams would have meant more power generation for each unit of water release and at the same time more water for agriculture, thus less water [for irrigation] pumped from aquifers, and thus less demand of power.”
Earlier this month, Thakkar’s organization published a short paper criticizing dam administrators for allowing water levels to become alarmingly low.
Thakkar says the answer to India’s current power crisis isn’t more hydroelectric dams, as most currently existing dams aren’t built or operated for maximum efficiency. Instead, power can be saved by harvesting rainwater.
“Since most of our water is coming from groundwater, we need to store the rainfall in aquifers that are fast depleting,” he says. “This would have multiple spin-off benefits.” With healthier aquifers, farmers wouldn’t have to run electric-powered pumps as much to adequately irrigate their crops – a major drag on the power grid.
“More dams won’t help achieve that,” Thakkar says, adding that farmers should shift to less water-intensive crops. “It is amazing that, among all the crops, [acreage devoted to] sugarcane has gone up in this drought year!”
At the Center for Science and the Environment, Chandra Bushan provides some of the hard numbers behind today’s blackout, as well as a simple cause: Indian states are taking more power from the grid than they are supposed to, even as the power system lacks the flexibility to meet seasonal spikes in demand.
In this case, a weak and tardy annual monsoon has millions of households and businesses running their air conditioners for longer than they would under normal conditions. This from the CSE:
Electricity generation for the month of June illustrates this problem:
In June 2012, India produced 8 per cent more electricity than in June 2011.
The generation from thermal power plants was 11.4 per cent higher than in June 2011. Coal-based power plants generated 16.7 per cent more electricity.
However, with low monsoon, the generation of electricity from hydropower plants reduced by 6 per cent compared to June 2011. In fact, hydropower plants produced 19 per cent lesser electricity in April-June, 2012 than the corresponding months in 2011. As hydro plants are also peak load plants, this reduction seems to have affected the peak power generation in the country significantly.
None of this logic – nor the many recent plans and ideas for improving the management and efficiency of India’s power grid – will make a difference to the contractors and bureaucrats in the “Build Baby Build” crowd that has much to gain from poorly-planned dam construction.
The debate over dams has become so silly that earlier this month a minister from the government of Uttarakhand state went on a one-day hunger strike to support more construction on the Himalayan tributaries of the Ganges River. Mantri Prasad Naithani’s constituency is in the region of Tehri Gahrwal, which was submerged a decade ago by the giant Tehri dam. Residents of the doomed town of Tehri were relocated to a “model town” higher up the valley to make room for the $1 billion, 1,000 megawatt hydroelectric dam’s reservoir.
When I visited New Tehri last year, power outages were commonplace.
But it’s brute force, not the rhetorical kind, that truly keeps this movement alive.
On June 22, the Indian environmentalist Bharat Jhunjhunwala was attacked in his home in Uttarakhand state by a gang of 40 thugs purportedly working for a contracting company. At the time of the attack, Jhunjhunwala, 62, had been hosting G.D. Agrawal, an eminent scientist turned swami who is also known as Gyan Swarup Anand. Agrawal was in the region to protest the coming submergence of the Dhari Devi Temple on the Alaknanda river by a hydroelectric project.
In full view of local police and journalists, the crowd kicked in Jhunjhunwalla’s door and blackened his face with ink. He and his wife were forced to flee the area.
“They threatened him that they will burn him alive in the house if he did not stop opposing the dams within two days,” according to an account by Jhunjhunwala’s family.
India’s power grid suffers from inertia on one hand and from destructive greed on the other. It doesn’t suffer from a shortage of dams.