Chinese President Xi Jinping
Chinese President Xi Jinping has made a rare visit to the Tibetan border town of Nyingchi, strategically located close to Arunachal Pradesh, official media reported on Friday. Xi arrived at Ningqi Menling airport on Wednesday and was warmly received by local people and officials from various ethnic groups, Xinhua news agency reported.
He then visited the Nyang River Bridge, to observe ecological conservation in the basin of the Brahmaputra River, which is called Yarlung Zangbo in Tibetan. Nyingchi is a prefecture-level city in Tibet bordering Arunachal Pradesh.
China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet, which India has strongly rejected. The India-China border dispute involves the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Chinese leaders visit Tibet from time to time. But Xi, who also heads China’s ruling Communist Party and the powerful Central Military Commission – the overall high command of the Chinese military – is perhaps the first top leader to visit Tibet’s border city in recent years.
Nyingchi was in the news in June when China fully operationalized its first bullet train in Tibet. This train connects Lhasa, the provincial capital of Tibet, with Ningchi. It has a design speed of 160 km/h and runs on single-line electrified railways covering a distance of 435.5 km.
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