Beijing over the next five years will build two new railway lines from Lhasa that will cover more than 750 kilometres and cost 36 billion yuan (HK$40.45 billion) - equivalent to 82 per cent of the region's GDP last year.
Such enormous projects, with little short-term economic return, have become commonplace as the central government pours money into China's poorest region: over the last 10 years, it has spent more than 300 billion yuan, the equivalent of 105,000 yuan for each of its 2.9 million inhabitants.
As in Xinjiang, the country's other sensitive region, the aim is threefold: integrate Tibet into the national economy, raise living standards and win the hearts and minds of its people, persuading them that life under Beijing is better than any alternative.
'Tibet had started on a new phase of development and progress,' Qiangba Puncog, the then chairman of Tibet's regional government, said in January. 'Everyone in Tibet has learnt the lesson that 'unity and stability means wealth, while separatism and chaos means poverty'.'
Last year, the region's GDP reached 44 billion yuan, an increase of 12.4 per cent over 2008; the average income of farmers and herdsmen rose 13 per cent to 3,589 yuan, the seventh year of double-digit increase.
The most important industry was tourism; last year, Tibet received 5.56 million domestic and foreign visitors and earned a record 5.24 billion yuan. A total of 42,000 farmers and herdsmen worked in the tourist industry, earning 260 million yuan.
These figures are the start of a return on Beijing's massive investments, especially the railway it completed in July 2006, linking Lhasa to Xining and the rest of China, at a cost of more than US$4.2 billion. It was Tibet's first railway; by 2020, it will have six more, including a link to Nepal, due for completion in 2013.