New Railway Between China And Nepal May Tunnel Under Mount Everest

As China pushes to develop its new Silk Road, a new railway between China and Nepal is under construction, and it could include a tunnel that will be built under Mount Everest, AFP reports, citing the China Daily newspaper.

The Qinghai-Tibet railway already links the rest of China with the Tibetan capital Lhasa and beyond, and a new extension will run as far as the international border “at Nepal’s request”, the China Daily newspaper reported, quoting an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The railway extension will stretch out for another 540 kilometers from Xigaze to Jilong county which sits on the border of China and Nepal, according to the report.

Such a plan could see a tunnel being built under Mount Everest, the China Daily said.

“The line will probably have to go through Qomolangma so that workers may have to dig some very long tunnels,” expert Wang Mengshu told the China Daily, referring to Mount Everest by its Tibetan name.

The railway extension is expected to be completed by 2020.

During a visit to Kathmandu in December, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said that the new railway could eventually be extended to the Nepalese capital and further, potentially providing a crucial link between China and the huge markets of India, according to Nepalese media.

The proposal highlights China’s influence in the impoverished Himalayan nation, where Beijing has been constructing roads and investing billions of dollars in hydropower and telecommunications for years.

Beijing’s increasing role has sounded alarms in New Delhi that China — a close ally to Pakistan — is forging closer economic ties with Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Nepal in a deliberate strategy to encircle India.

Nepal is an important transit point between China and South Asia, as a major chunk of the two countries’ expanding trade has been conducted through Tibet.

Earlier in March, when Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Nepalese President Ram Baran Yadav at the 2015 Boao Forum, the Nepalese President said that Nepal will support China’s initiatives of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road as well as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB.

Nepal has called for strengthened cooperation between the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, and China, in a bid to promote regional interconnectivity and economic development.