China opens third civilian airport in Tibet

Beijing, Jun 14: China will open its third civilian airport in Tibet in early July, boosting the number of visitors to the remote region, state media reported today.

The new airport could bring an extra 120,000 visitors a year to Tibet, which had 1.22 million tourists in 2004. It is scheduled to open the same month as the world's highest railway linking Xining, the capital of the China's western province of Qinghai, with Lhasa.

Beijing says that the 2,040 km rail link will promote development and help raise living standards, while Tibet activists say it will speed up the pace of Chinese migration there and dilute Tibetan Buddhist culture.

The Dalai Lama fled Lhasa in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, nine years after Communist troops invaded the remote, mountainous area now known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Official news agency Xinhua last month quoted the region's tourism bureau as saying the train would bring an extra 400,000 people into Tibet every year. The tourism authority predicts Tibet will receive more than five million visitors a year by 2010.

Construction of Nyingchi Airport, 2,949 metres above sea level in Nyingchi Prefecture and 400 km from the Tibetan capital Lhasa, was completed in April at a cost of 780 million yuan, Xinhua said.

''The lower altitude will make Nyingchi an ideal first stop for tourists to gradually adapt themselves to Tibet's highland climate and minimise the effect of thin oxygen,'' Xinhua quoted a spokesman for Air China Southwest, a subsidiary of Air China and the airport's manager, as saying.

Tibet's other two airports are in Lhasa, about 3,650 metres above sea level, and eastern Qamdo, whose occupation by Chinese troops in 1950 served as a precursor to the eventual defeat of the Lhasa government.

REUTERS