THE Yunnan-Tibet Highway, another trunk highway built in China's southwest frontier region, is now open to traffic. It is the fourth trunk line from the hinterland to Tibet following the building of the Szechuan-Tibet, Chinghai-Tibet and Sinkiang-Tibet Highways.

Starting from Hsiakuan in Yunnan Province in the south and terminating in Mangkang in the Tibet Autonomous Region in the north, this highway is 716 kilometres long and links with the Szechuan-Tibet Highway leading to Lhasa.

Some 4,300 metres above sea level, the Yunnan-Tibet Highway crosses the Chinsha and Lantsang Rivers and winds its way through two snow-capped mountains.

The building of this highway started in 1967, the year after the Great Cultural Revolution began. The terrain traversed by the highway is part of the Hengtuan Mountain Range. Because of the region's loose geological formation, bourgeois "experts" once declared that it was impossible to build a highway there. But a contingent of road builders composed of people from over ten nationalities in China, including Tibetans, Hans, Yis and Pais, gave full play to the spirit of fearing neither sacrifices nor fatigue and working continuously, overcame various difficulties arising from glaciers, shifting sand and frozen earth, and succeeded in building the highway. For the local people to cross the Chinsha and Lantsang Rivers by means of a suspension cable is now a thing of the past.Today, three double-arch bridges and a steel suspension bridge have been put up.

The highway runs through the Tiching Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province and the Chamdo Prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region which were practically inaccessible before liberation. The Tibetan people who lived in these two prefectures generation after generation had to cross mountains and rivers to buy salt and tea; The founding of New China has created favourable conditions for them to develop industrial and agricultural production rapidly. But a highway was needed in order to speed up construction in the frontier areas.

The opening to traffic of the Yunnan-Tibet Highway will play an important role in promoting socialist construction in China's southwest frontier region. Now fully loaded trucks can be seen in places where even horse caravans could not reach in the past. Hydropower stations have been set up in the snow-bound ravines which have slumbered for centuries, and tractors and other machinery have been sent to these areas to meet the needs of socialist construction.

(This article appears on page 23, No. 28, 1976)