Before the peaceful liberation, traffic and transportation in Tibet were primitive and poor. On a land of over 1.2 million square kilometers there was not a single regular highway, not to mention modern transportations such as railway, aviation, water transport and pipelines. Transportation of production and living materials depended entirely on humans and livestock. It was not until after the liberation of Tibet in 1951 that the situation -- narrow meandering footpaths and scaling ladders, overhead cables and single-plank bridges -- was changed.

On December 25, 1954, the 4,360-kilometer-long Sichuan-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet highways brought traffics to Lhasa at the same time, putting an end to the history of Tibet with no highway. With the first successful test flight over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Tibet saw its first air traffic and got even closer to the inland of the motherland.

As for now, a highway network with five national-level highways -- Sichuan-Tibet, Qinghai-Tibet, Xinjiang-Tibet, Yunnan-Tibet and China-Nepal -- as its artery and with Lhasa as its center has basically taken shape, expanding across Tibet. By the end of 2004 total length of highways in Tibet has reached 43,500 kilometers, with 92 percent towns and 71 percent administrative villages connected by highroads. The highly convenient highway network enables farm produce to be delivered to the outside world.

The central government invested in 1994 huge amount of money in repairing the world's highest airport -- Bangda Airport, which was officially opened on April 28, 1995. Linzhi Airport broke ground in 2003 and is expected to be put to use by the end of this year. Flight courses in Tibet have increased from one to 13 now and every week there are more than 60 flights in Tibet as compared with only one in the past. In busy seasons the number can exceed 80. In 2004 alone passengers topped 800,000.

In the 1970s then Premier Zhou Enlai approved building an oil transmission pipeline from Golmud to Lhasa. Started in 1973, the pipeline of more than 1,000 kilometers took tens of thousands workers to complete in 1977. The building of the pipeline is of special significance to Tibet which lacks in fuel and is far away from oil resources.

History will forever remember this day: on June 29, 2001, the second-stage project of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which drew the concerns of three generations of the central leadership, officially broke ground to connect Golmud with Lhasa. The central government invested 26.21 billion yuan into the 1,142-kilometer-long "steel dragon". The railway has 960 kilometers at over 4,000 meters in altitude with the highest point of 5,072 meters at Tanggula Mountains. It has 550-odd kilometers on frozen lands. By now the track-laying along Qinghai-Tibet Railway has reached Lhasa and will be put into trial operation by the end of next June. Tibet, the only provincial region yet to have railways, will erect its own steel backbones.

"It is the Communist Party of China that led us to create the transportation miracle in Tibet and erect a 'golden bridge'by which various ethnic groups in Tibet walk toward an affluent life and the 'world roof'is open into the world," said Dorji, Tibet's first Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief engineer of the Bureau of Geological and Mineral Exploration and Development of Tibet, who couldn't conceal his excitement when talking about the changes in his hometown.

About 95 percent materials and over 85 percent personnel go through Tibet on highways and more than 7 million visitors and over 160,000 tons cargos/mails by air. From January to June, 542,000 tourists visited Tibet, an increase of 7.2 percent year on year.

By People's Daily Online