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Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet
Times Books
May 2008
On Sale: May 13, 2008
320 pages
ISBN: 0805083243
EAN: 9780805083248
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A vivid account of China's unstoppable quest to build a
railway into Tibet, and its obsession to transform its land
and its peopleIn the summer of 2006, the Chinese government
fulfilled a fifty-year plan to build a railway into Tibet. Since Mao Zedong first envisioned it, the line had grown
into an imperative, a critical component of China's
breakneck expansion and the final maneuver in strengthening
China's grip over this remote and often mystical frontier,
which promised rich resources and geographic supremacy over
South Asia. Through the lives of the Chinese and Tibetans
swept up in the project, Fortune magazine writer Abrahm
Lustgarten explores the 'Wild West' atmosphere of the
Chinese economy today. He follows innovative Chinese
engineer Zhang Luxin as he makes the train's route over the
treacherous mountains and permafrost possible (for now), and
the tenacious Tibetan shopkeeper Rinzen, who struggles to
hold on to his business in a boomtown that increasingly
favors the Han Chinese. As the railway-the highest and
steepest in the world-extends to Lhasa, and China's 'Go
West' campaign delivers waves of rural poor eager to make
their fortunes, their lives and communities fundamentally
change, sometimes for good, sometimes not.Lustgarten's book
is a timely, provocative, and absorbing first-hand account
of the Chinese boom and the promise and costs of rapid
development on the country's people.
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