On a dusty river bed in the shadow of the Potala Palace, home of Tibet's exiled Dalai Lama, a bridge is rising that China says will bring prosperity to the Roof of the World.
The bridge will carry trains from China into a railway station to be built in the capital, Lhasa, ferrying supplies, investment and people to one of the most sparsely populated, remote and least developed regions on earth.
Whether that investment is intended to bring prosperity to the 2.7 million ethnic Tibetans, to ease immigration of more ethnic Han Chinese workers or to supply huge army garrisons charged with keeping a lid on anti-Chinese feeling are questions many experts ask.
A glance at Lhasa is enough to answer at least one of those questions.
Thousands upon thousands of ethnic Chinese are seeking their fortune in this western outpost of China, opening businesses along Lhasa streets that were grassland less than a decade ago.
China has already spent nearly $2 billion to lay half the track of the 1,140 km (710-mile) railway line, much of which will run at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres (13,000 ft). The project, of such complexity that few thought it would ever be built, was initially budgeted at $2.4 billion.
"Once the Tibet line is opened it will be beneficial for Lhasa and the whole Tibet Autonomous Region. It will stimulate the development of Tibet's economy," Wang Weigao, engineer-in-chief of the bridge project, told reporters.
"It will bring a big change for Tibetans, and the lives of the people of Lhasa and I believe it will bring great development," he said.
Those changes may be beyond the imagination of most Tibetans.
An internal report says the government plans to increase the population of Lhasa from 350,000-400,000 to 2.5 million in line with China's policy of bringing development through urbanisation and ensuring that ethnic Chinese outnumber the restive, deeply Buddhist, native Tibetans.
"There has been a huge increase in money and development with government money coming in but the economy is not growing, business is not being created or products produced," said John Power, a Tibet expert at the Australian National University in Canberra.
"The government money coming in is going to Han Chinese and not to Tibetans," he said.
Development of Tibet is crucial for China, both to appease the local populace and to ease fears in Beijing that countries neighbouring the strategically placed Himalayan land may be casting a greedy eye in its direction.
China has invested 28.24 billion yuan (nearly $3.5 billion) in the region in the past four years, with government funds rising from 2.36 billion yuan in 2000 to a staggering 11.1 billion yuan in 2003.
Returns have been next to zero. But that may matter less than ensuring stability among a people who still revere the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959, as their god-king.
The investment is unlikely to diminish since official figures show the wealth gap between rich and poor in Tibet is the most serious in all of western China - a region where already the less advantaged are being left further and further behind by breakneck economic growth in eastern coastal regions.
Urban dwellers in Tibet earned an average per capita 8,000 yuan in 2003 compared with 1,690 yuan for farmers and herders.
"The railway will make it cheaper and easier to immigrate," said Powers, adding that ethnic Chinese were also attracted by government incentives such as tax breaks for investment in the remote region, and Tibetans were being left out.
"About 3,000 escape Tibet every year and that doesn't happen if conditions are good," said Powers. "People are willing to live under repression but not economic hardship. They are voting with their feet."
Tibet experts say there is no doubt that some Tibetans have profited spectacularly from the influx of government funds, and not just the many Tibetans who have got government jobs but also entrepreneurs.
"You can't fault the Chinese, they have produced a quietist situation and people are accepting the money," said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University in New York.
"The lifestyles of the middle classes have improved, especially for officials and those in work units," he said. "There is tertiary-sector development and this is creating a kind of quietism among wealthy Tibetans."
But the development has barely reached the vast majority of Tibetans who still live the rural or nomadic herder existence they have followed for centuries and focus their lives on religion.
Religion may now have affected China's entire development direction in Tibet with a far sharper focus on Han Chinese than on ethnic Tibetans, experts say.
"They may not trust Tibetans as people or as leaders, particularly educated Tibetans," said Barnett, noting that Chinese officials may have been shocked by the number of Tibetans who had adhered to Communist Party-mandated atheism while in office but reverted to paying homage at temples upon retirement.
He cited signs of a renewed ban on religious practice by government officials as well as the unprecedented appointment of ethnic Chinese to run rural communities after three years of studying the Tibetan language at university in Lhasa.
"The Chinese government is extremely careful on policy in Tibet and there must be a reason for this huge change," he said. "They may no longer trust or respect Tibetan leaders at any level."
The persistence of religious belief even among Tibetan officials charged with nurturing modernisation may have prompted Beijing to take every measure to ensure that its investment in a spectacular feat of engineering to create a railway to Lhasa is not mis-spent.
"The issue is that if you buy people off what do you get?" said Barnett. "It is not clear you get any increase in belief, you just get an increase in compliance. The problem China has is it tries to buy these people off but there is an extraordinary credibility gap."
Ordinary Tibetans seem unimpressed by the railway creeping towards Lhasa. The railway bridge is intended to reflect Tibetan culture, officials say, its arches designed to resemble the ceremonial white "hada" scarf, its feet flaring out like yak hooves.
But even that design may not have won over Tibetans.
"The central government tells the outside world that it is investing in Tibet and developing Tibet," said 21-year-old construction worker Migma Tsering.
"Is Tibet developed today? You can see for yourself that it is not," he said, gesturing to potholed streets and pilgrims from out of town prostrating themselves in the dusty street as they make their sacred circumambulation of Lhasa.
"China is a relatively backward country itself. Tibet would be better off developing with the aid of another country," he said.
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