BEIJING - China opened the world’s highest railway on Saturday, celebrating the link to Tibet as a symbol of national strength and ethnic harmony while critics decried it as a threat to Tibetan culture and the environment.A stiffly proud President Hu Jintao waved farewell as the first train left Golmud, the outpost in the far-western province of Qinghai where the new 1,142-km (710-mile) track to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, begins. “The building of the Qinghai-Tibet railway is of major significance for accelerating the economic and social development of Tibet and Qinghai, improving the lives of people of every ethnicity, and strengthening unity between ethnic groups,” Hu told a meeting broadcast on Chinese television.
The first train from Beijing leaves on Saturday evening amid a crescendo of publicity and reaches Lhasa 48 hours later, after a 4,000-km (2,500-mile) journey touching altitudes of over 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) above sea level on the Tibetan plateau.