How did you feel when you learned the Chinese had built a railroad to Lhasa?
For myself, I was astonished by the sheer engineering prowess of the project. The railroad rises to 16,000 feet above sea level, as high as light aircraft might fly, and enough to make it by far the highest railroad in the world.
Yet I’m also sickened by the thought that one of the world’s last truly unique cultures will be devastated by this project. For the first time in history, outsiders will be free to pour in to this previously remote region and dominate the culture of Tibetans. “Cultural genocide,” the Dalai Lama has called it.
Lest you think this is all too far from Canada for you to be concerned about, the railroad will run using railcars supplied by Canada’s Bombardier Inc. Good news for Canada. Bad news for Tibetans.
Bombardier Inc. is no stranger to, ahem, “co-operation” with governments. Indeed, it seems to make a specialty of it.
In Silent Partners: Taxpayers and the Bankrolling of Bombardier, author Peter Hadekel chronicles Bombardier’s pattern of purchasing government companies at bargain prices, often with government assistance, and later coming back to Ottawa for support to survive.
As for the Chinese, they are said to be currently taking a hardline policy on Tibet under such innocuous-sounding names as “patriotic re-education“.
The railroad opens July 1, 2006.
Oh. And by the way. That’s Canada Day.
