Transportation and Post and Telecommunications

　　 Highways and Railroads. There were no public roads in old Tibet. Transportation of goods depended solely on man and animal power. During the 1 950s PLA soldiers and local people built several highways connecting Lhasa and some other parts of China. Today, a 22,000-kilometer highway net-work radiating from Lhasa consisting of 15 trunk highways and 315 feeder roads has been formed. Most important are the Sichuan-Tibet, Qinghai-Tibet, Xinjiang-Tibet, Yunnan-Tibet and Sino-Nepalese highways. The Qinghai-Tibet High-way runs 2,122 kilometers from Xining to Lhasa. About 80 percent of the goods entering Tibet every year, nearly 500,000 tons, are carried on this road. The Sichuan-Tibet Highway covers the 2,413 kilometers from Chengdu to Lhasa. The Xinjiang-Tibet Highway, from Yecheng to Gar-tok, runs for 1,179 kilometers. The Yunnan-Tibet Highway, from Xiaguan to Markam, is 315 kilometers long, while the Chinese section of the Sino-Nepalese Highway stretches 736 kilometers from Lhasa to Zam entry/exit port.
　　The region has a Highway/Railway Joint Transport Company which handles every kind of business regarding passenger or goods transport in or out of Tibet. It has the capacity to handle containerized goods and less-than-freight traffic in quantities exceeding 1 million tons. In 1954 there were 54 automobiles for civil use regionwide. Today there are 30,000. Laid in the 1 970s, the 1,080-kilometer oil pipeline from Golmud in Qinghai to Lhasa has a designed annual capacity of 250,000 tons and an actual annual load of 100,000-120,000 tons.
　　The first phase of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was com-pleted in the early 1 980s and is now carrying both cargo and passengers. Running 846.9 kilometers from Xining, the capi-tal city of Qinghai in the east to Golmud in western Qinghai, the line is built at more than 3,000 meters above sea level on average, rising to 3,700 meters at its highest. Construction of the second-phase project is in full swing. Investment in-volved is expected to reach 14 billion yuan. This is geared to put an end to the history when Tibet is not accessed by trains.
Civil Aviation. Lhasa has scheduled flights to Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Ka-thmandu, the capital ofNepal. The distance by air from Lhasa to Chengdu is a little more than 1,100 kilometers. Each year more than 100,000 passengers fly this route along with 1,600 tons of freight. Renovations to Gonggar Airport outside of Lhasa now allow access to large passenger aircraft like Bo-eing 767. The 250-million-yuan Bamda Airport, the world's highest, was completed in September 1994.
　　Post and Telecommunications. In 1996 Tibet had more than 139 post offices, 74,000 kilometers of postal service routes, and 650 kilometers of air mail routes. Volume of pos-tal business registered an 88 percent increase from the pre-vious year. Satellite long-distance transmission is available in cities and towns and half of the counties; they are likewise part of the long-distance telephone automatic switching net-work. Statistics show, from 1995 to 1998, investments in the posts and telecommunications services reached 1.597 billion yuan. By 1998, the region had 80 satellite transmission and ground stations, and 74 counties had gained access to pro-gram-controlled telephone service. Recent years also saw the establishment of the Lhasa Program-Controjled Tele-phone Bureau, the Postal Hub Building, 900 megacell mobile phones and a beeper paging system covering five districts. There were 1,841 long-distance telephone circuits, a long-distance automatic switching capacity adding up to 5,810 terminals, a telephone exchange capacity totalling 59,000 circuits, and a mobile phone capacity of 85 channels. Tele-phone popularity rate reached 1.6 sets per 10,000 people. The integration of long-distance and local calling systems in cities and towns has been fundamentally realized. A modem post and telecommunications network revolving around Lhasa, linking the cities and rural areas, has been established.
　　Lhasa is now part of the international and domestic au-tomatic telephone network. Using program-controlled tele-phones, one can dial direct to more than 180 countries and regions in the world and throughout China. Subscribers can directly communicate by telephone with most countries. Some telegraph lines can transmit telexes. Lhasa has express mail and special delivery service to nearly 200 cities in China.
　　The region has two international postal routes passing into neighboring countries at the Zam entry/exit port and Yadong in Xigaze Prefecture.