China intends to connect Tibet and Xinjiang via the Aksai Chin railway.

According to a new railway plan unveiled by the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) government, China will soon start building an ambitious new railway line connecting Xinjiang and Tibet that will pass through the disputed Aksai Chin region and run close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The “medium to long term railway plan” for Tibet, which was made public last week, calls for increasing the TAR rail network from its current 1,400 km to 4,000 km by 2025. New routes will also be added to reach China’s borders with India and Nepal.

The Xinjiang-Tibet railway project, which will roughly parallel the G219 national highway’s route, is the most ambitious of the new plans. Tensions between India and China in the years before the 1962 war were brought on by constructing the Xinjiang-Tibet highway through Aksai Chin.

Shigatse, in Tibet, will serve as the starting point of the proposed railway, which will then travel northwest along the Nepal border before turning north through Aksai Chin and coming to an end in Hotan, in Xinjiang. The line’s first segment, from Shigatse to Pakhuktso, will be finished by 2025, and the remainder, up to Hotan, is anticipated to be finished by 2035. On the Chinese side of the LAC, the proposed route will circumvent Pangong Lake and pass through Rutog.

According to the plan, which was made public by the TAR Development and Reform Commission, “by 2025, the construction of several railway projects, including the Ya’an-Nyingchi section of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, the Shigatse-Pakhuktso section of the Xinjiang-Tibet Railway, and the Bomi-Ra’uk section of the Yunnan-Tibet Railway, will all see major progress.”

The report stated that “improvements to the regional railway network will be of great significance in fostering socioeconomic development and preserving national security.”