On the 23th of June, the deputy mayor of the Qamdo City, Tsering Jigme  indicated that during the 13th Five-Year Plan, Qamdo will realize a tridimensional transportation construction project that focuses on “Great Passageway” of Sichuan-Tibet, Yunnan-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet which will resolve the current transportation bottle-neck problem.

Qamdo is located in eastern Tibet where the provinces and regions of Tibet, Sichuan, Qinghai and Yunnan collide. Being a crucial component of the China’s  Grand Shangri-la ecological tourist zone as well as of the Ancient Tea Route Culture,  Qamdo is also the important door connecting Tibet and inland China.

In the Press Conference held on the same day,  Tsering Jigme introduced that  Qamdo is  one of Tibet’s ancient civilization centers and that it is the cradle of the Kangba culture which has a long history and of rich culture. Yet the topographical characteristics within Qamdo are very complex with many mountain ranges, deep valleys and dangerous roads, which lead to the fact that many people “wish to visit here but cannot make it here”. In order to solve this problem, during the 13th Five-Year Plan, Qamdo will speed up the preparation regarding the first-phrase demonstration related to building the high-level highways connecting Qamdo and the neighboring cities and prefectures such as Deqing of Yunnan, Yushu in Qinghai, Garzi in Sichuan, therein the construction process will start on time, “the opening of the highways will also provide transportation convenience to self-driving tourists.”

Due to the infrastructure limitation, at the moment, Qamdo has only opened direct airlines flights from Qamdo to Chengdu, Chongqing and Lhasa. Other than this, the number of those airline flights going to Qamdo is very small. During the high season, it is very difficult to be able to buy one ticket. “It takes time to travel by land, it is hard to book plane tickets, and therefore many people  cannot even leave after they arrive here.”

During the 13th Five-Year Plan, Tibet will highly develop the airline industry in Qamdo and add more flights and airlines as well as speed up the extending construction of the Bangda Airport of Qamdo. The second runway in the Bangda Airport is under construction and is expected to be completed during the second half of this year. At the same time, the extended construction of the Bangda Airport will be carried out by the end of this year.

Besides, Tsering Jigme said that the Kangding-Qamdo section belonging to the Sichuan-Tibet Railway will start to be constructed in 2018. Other than this, first phase  preparation work for the construction of the Deqin-Bangda section of the Yunnan-Tibet Railway as well as for the construction of the Yushu-Qamdo section of the Gansu-Tibet Railway will be soon started.

He indicated that after the transportation infrastructure is completed, Qamdo will fully give play to the geographical advantages of connecting Tibet with Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai, therein joining the state’s “Belt and Road Initiative” construction and integrating them with big neighboring  economic zones as well as by setting up an economic center at the bordering zone where the four provinces and regions meet.