TERRITORY, resources and even emotion are vital reasons for China's determination to maintain its 57-year rule of Tibet, analysts say. A potent mixture of cool strategic thinking and deep-seated feelings explains why China holds on to the Himalayan region, even if it means deaths and international opprobrium, they argue. “Tibet is very important for China not only strategically, but also militarily,” said Andrew Fischer, an economist specializing in Tibet at London School of Economics. “It's mainly there for national security reasons.” A quick look at the map of Asia is enough to see why Tibet is so crucial. It is at the intersection of three great powers - China, India and Russia - and whoever controls it automatically has an advantage. China has given many reasons for building a railroad to Tibet's capital, Lhasa. But perhaps the most important is that it gives China the capacity to move troops speedily in great numbers to Tibet in case of military conflict with India or Russia, both of whom clashed with China as late as the 1960s. Tibet was historically important because stability in the region ensures safety for China's western border and for India's northern frontier. Now a very 21st century concern - water supply - has made it even more important. “It's the source of a great number of large rivers,” said Ran Guangrong, a professor at the Centre for Tibetan Studies at Sichuan University in southwest China's Chengdu city. “It's China's water reservoir. If something happened to it, all of China would take a direct blow,” he said. Aside from water, authorities have highlighted a treasure trove of copper, zinc, gold and other materials that could supply the resource-hungry Chinese economy, with the new train line able to transport it out. However Tsering Wangdu Shakya, a Tibet specialist at University of British Columbia, said extracting these resources was not cost effective. “Tibet has a lot of copper. But it's more expensive to extract that copper than just buying it in the international market,” said Tsering Wangdu Shakya, a Tibet specialist at the University of British Columbia. “Everything has to be taken out by road or train, which is much more expensive than when you can transport it in huge container ships,” he said. Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong decided to invade Tibet in October 1950, a mere year after gaining power in Beijing. It is a mark of Tibet's importance to China that Mao invaded as he had his hands full - that year, he was planning to enter the Korean War, taking on the world's mightiest military power, the United States. Mao was a military romanticist for whom emotion was as important as objective reasons. Paul Harris, an expert on Chinese politics at Hong Kong's Lingnan University, says that where Tibet is concerned, this is still the case. “The unfortunate thing is the Chinese are thoroughly, utterly, completely emotional about Tibet,” said Harris. China's wish to dominate Tibet is also based on the fear that if it leaves the fold, Muslim-dominated Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia or Taiwan could be next. “They don't want to set any precedent,” said Harris, adding this explains China's unwillingness to accept the recent formal independence of Kosovo from Serbia. “Even what might be a rightful self-determination movement abroad, on the other side of the planet, frightens Beijing, because it controls lots of its territory by force.” Also at stake is the Communist Party's image as the only regime in modern times that has been able to keep China strong and feared by its neighbors. “The Communist Party's credibility is partly based on Chinese nationalism. The Communist Party is the first group in China that reunified the country and made it strong,” said Shakya of University of British Columbia. “If Tibet were to be lost, the Communist Party would also be seen as unable to keep the country intact. It is really important for the party to keep that.” __
