Here are reasons why Red China "cared" to exploit Tibet: 18 million
tons of copper mines, crude oil, gas reserved, tourism to Himalaya
mountain, influx Han population and businesses over Tibetan.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/20/magazines/fortune/lustgarten_china.fortune/index.htm
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China mines Tibet's rich resources
The railway link to Tibet now appears to have been part of a broader
plan to exploit vast deposits of metals in the disputed region,
explains Fortune's Abrahm Lustgarten.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Abrahm Lustgarten, Fortune re****ter
February 21 2007: 2:18 PM EST
(Fortune) -- When China opened its controversial new railway to Tibet
last July, international critics howled at the prospect that the
region's culture and environment would be ravaged in search of
resources. China repeated a solemn refrain, its officials insisting
that the $4 billion project was aimed not at plundering the disputed
territory but at bringing prosperity and economic development to
Tibetan society.
So much for that. Now China's Ministry of Land and Resources is
disclosing monumental new resource discoveries all across Tibet, and
it turns out the findings are the culmination of a secret seven-year,
$44 million survey project which preceded the railway construction in
the first place.
Next stop, Lhasa
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In 1999 more than 1000 researchers divided into 24 separate regiments
and fanned out across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, geologically mapping
an area the size of California, Texas and Montana for the first time
ever. Their findings: 16 major new deposits of copper, iron, lead,
zinc and other minerals worth an estimated $128 billion, according to
articles published last week on the website of the China Tibet
Information Center, a government-run ****tal.
"Lack of resources has been a bottleneck for the economy," Meng
Xianlai, director of the China Geological Survey, said in the
statements. The discoveries in Tibet are prompting China to re-
evaluate its potential domestic resources, and "will alleviate the
mounting resources pressure China is facing."
In fact, if proven, the new reserves make Tibet one of the richest
regions in China's territory and could ****ft the country's reliance on
im****ts of copper and iron altogether, affecting international
commodity markets way beyond China. Altogether Tibet is now said to
hold as much as 40 million tons of copper - one third of China's total
- 40 million tons of lead and zinc, and more than a billion tons of
high-grade iron.
The announcement comes at a time when Tibetans are struggling to
adjust to an astronomical increase in the number of tourists and
Chinese settlers traveling on the 710-mile railway extention. In Lhasa
last fall hotels were booked to capacity, the city's streets were
clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic, and a gold-rush mentality
pervaded among newly-arrived entrepreneurs seeking at least a small-
scale piece of the mineral riches.
One Chengdu-based hotelier blithely bragged he had invested $2 million
to startup a private iron mining operation six hour's drive from
Lhasa. At least six major Canadian and Australian mining companies
also have stakes in Chinese consortiums set up to operate on the
plateau. China is the world's largest im****ter of iron ore - 326
million tons last year - much of which feeds its insatiable steel
mills and in turn its ballooning construction and auto industries.
High-grade iron prices have more than tripled in the last two years,
driving up development costs world-wide, at least partially because of
China's demand. Among the Tibet discoveries is China's first
substantial rich-iron supply, a seam called Nyixung, which alone is
expected to contain as much as 500 million tons.
Wind power blows through China
That's enough to put an expected 20% of Chinese iron im****ters out of
business this year and, according to China Geological Survey's vice
director Zhang Hongtao, "may relieve the country's three-decade long
dependency on iron im****ts."
The new copper reserves are no less substantial. A 250-mile seam of
the metal has been found along Tibet's environmentally cherished
Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge. One mine there called Yulong, already described
as the second-largest reserve in China, is now estimated to hold as
much as 18 million tons according to the government news site Xinhua
and could soon become the largest copper mine in the country, helping
to feed China's hyper-charged metabolism for the metal used for
electrical wiring and generation.
In all, three new Tibetan copper finds increase China's total copper
reserves by a third, according to the international mining industry
website Mineweb, and, once production comes online, will decrease
im****ts by the same amount. China, which until now has im****ted much
of its copper from Chile, is estimated to hold 5.6% of the world's
copper and is its seventh largest producer.
While trans****tation development continues - a fresh set of satellite
images on Google shows a large increase in road construction branching
off the new railway route - education and health care spending in
Tibet continue to lag far behind the rest of China, provoking the ire
of human rights advocates.
"Clearly China's leaders have never intended the railway to benefit
Tibetans," says Matt Whitticase at the London-based organization Free
Tibet Campaign. And future development priorities do little to alter
that image. Last March China announced - among the national priorities
listed in its 11th Ten-Year Plan - an extension of the railway from
its present terminal in Lhasa to the western city of ****gatze, and
beyond.
What's there? According to the Geological Survey's hopeful Zhang,
"super-large" crude oil and gas reserves in Tibet's far-western
Qiangtang Basin, as well as large quantities of oil shale deposits in
areas west of the new train line.
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