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Bangkok, Thailand | Ancient Silk Road travelers cursed ChineseThe largest desert known as “Takla Makan” is an ominous Persian-Turkish phrase that roughly translates as “Enter and you may never come back.”
Undaunted by the sandstorms and brutal terrain in the rectangular basin north of Tibet’s glacier-filled peaks, Chinese engineers have announced the completion of the final section of the world’s first Taklamakan Desert railway loop line to encircle a desert.
Trains emerged as a central component of Communist leadership’s push for both internal control and external influence. A train connection to the remote Tibetan capital, Lhasa, has been hailed as an important step in connecting the bustling district with other areas. ChineseRailway construction projects are included in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road international infrastructure support program.
At home, Chinese It is building maglev train systems capable of carrying passengers and freight hundreds of miles per hour, including an underwater route in the vicinity. Shanghai to reach small offshore islands.
These last railroads became a talking point. ChineseMilitary, industrial, agricultural, and political prowess in the state-controlled press at a time when the Biden administration is struggling to pass its own major infrastructure bill through a reluctant Congress.
The Taklamakan Desert railway loop fits the strategic railway lines model. BeijingIndia gives greater access to the rebellious Kashgar, a remote southwestern city close to sensitive borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan. In Kashgar and elsewhere in Xinjiang province, there is a large population of restless Muslim Uighurs of ethnic Turkish origin, whose treatment by the central government has been harshly condemned by the US and other Western governments as well as private human rights groups.
Official Chinese accounts offer a much softer opening, saying the rail line will help bring economic development to one of the country’s poorest regions.
“With a designed speed [72 miles per hour], the fully completed railway line is expected to reduce travel time from three days to just one day between Hotan prefecture in Xinjiang and Xining, the capital of Northwest China’s Qinghai Province.” Chinese‘s official cable TV network CGTN recently reported. The project will bring rail service to five counties in Southern Xinjiang and integrate Southern Xinjiang into an extensive rail network along the Belt and Road routes.”
Beijing It denies multiple reports that security forces are imprisoning Uighurs in detention camps scattered across Xinjiang, camps aimed at eradicating suspected extremist Islamist beliefs, politics and behavior. Both the Trump and Biden administrations called the general campaign to suppress the Uighurs and increase the Han Chinese population in the region was a “genocide.”
Many Uyghurs dream of escaping Chinese control and want to see Turkey as a beacon with their ethnic and linguistic brethren in the Turkic-speaking countries of Central Asia.
Last year, international democracy activists boycotted Disney’s movie “Mulan,” starring dual US-Chinese national Liu Yifei, after the company thanked it. ChinesePublic Security Bureau for help with shooting in the Taklamakan Desert.
The rail loop also drives the operation of the Tarim Basin oil field, which is estimated to cover 350,000 square miles under Taklamakan’s huge dunes and shifting sands. An existing line continues from the oasis town of Hotan to Kashgar.
“Workers tighten the screw of the rail” and finished the last Hotan-Ruoqiang connection on September 27, Chinese‘s official Xinhua news was announced.
This newest link is expected to start selling tickets in June 2022, allowing the entire loop to surround Taklamakan, the size of Germany, the world’s second largest desert after the Sahara.
Taklamakan cycle Beijing as a way to help the region, particularly the impoverished southern tip of Xinjiang near northern Tibet. This edge includes an existing Golmud-Korla Railway now joining the new loop.
Other trains are already heading south from Golmud to Lhasa in Tibet, and future plans foresee these tracks to continue from Lhasa to Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
deep history
The tracks pass through a rich history of cultivation and conquest alongside ancient trade routes that the Belt and Road program hopes to reinvigorate in modern form. More than 2,000 years ago, Bronze Age residents buried mummies at Taklamakan, according to an excavation funded by France.
As the desert expanded south, ancient kingdoms fell into ruin or were buried.
These included the thriving kingdom of Loulan in the vast Lop Nur Lake, before its water evaporated in the 5th century. Buddhist monks also trod on these routes, spreading their godless religion to the east, until medieval sea routes replaced the perilous land marches to East Asia.
Chinese engineers built a railroad around the desert, recreating the caravan routes that connected the Silk Road. Chinese and Europe sweeping the edge of Taklamakan. The route is flanked by the snow-capped Tian Shan range in the north of the desert and the Kunlun Mountains along its southern curve. The rugged Pamir peaks form the western ridge.
The rail had to traverse or circumnavigate heights of up to 5,000 feet. Officials said “grass grids” have been laid on the 165 million square feet of sand dunes that are almost devoid of plant life.
They said “desertification prevention programs” planted 13 million saplings.
Engineers have designed long bridges over chaotic sand in the toughest, most unpredictable areas battered by sandstorms and choked by swollen dunes.
Closer Beijing Meanwhile, a maglev train project is starting in Shanxi, a north-central province. Magnets allow maglev train cars to float without wheels.
“The high-speed train uses superconducting magnetic levitation technology to leave the ground to eliminate drag friction,” said Chinese engineering expert Ma Tiehua, according to London-based Railway Technology news.
This maglev “uses a near-vacuum inner duct line to significantly reduce air resistance, [620 miph]’ said Mr. Ma.
Chinese already has the world’s fastest commercial maglev on a 19-mile route ShanghaiIt connected Pudong Airport to an urban subway system on the edge of the city at up to 268 mph in seven minutes.
Nearby, a bullet train prepares to pass under the sea at 155 miles per hour. UK-based website IFL Science reported in May that the project would be “the world’s first underwater bullet train.”
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