Can Beijing’s gateway plan for Tibet survive geopolitics and natural disasters?

On the windswept plains just south of Tibet’s second-largest city, the towering smart inspection systems and automated cargo gantries of a brand-new international land port gleam under the plateau’s high-altitude sun.

Official road maps predict the multibillion-yuan project in Shigatse will process up to 300 trucks daily by the end of 2030 – loading cargo off trains and onto the trucks that will take goods to their final destination. It will also allow the authorities to carry out customs checks away from the region’s international borders, which straddle the Himalayas.

However, on a quiet afternoon when the SCMP visited in late June, the Shigatse International Land Port processed just five trucks, according to Tenzin Namgyal, general manager of Shigatse Chengyou Supply Chain Management Co, the port’s operator.

The port is key to Beijing’s plans to transform Tibet into a southward-facing geoeconomic “bridgehead” by building up the region’s economic connections with South Asia.

But analysts say that achieving this goal will require overcoming extreme geography and navigating political tensions, which are set to rise with the looming reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

The vulnerability of this remote, high-altitude corridor was seen this week when deadly landslides and flash floods hit the Nepal-Tibet border, causing widespread devastation.

The disaster underscores the challenges of China’s long-term “southbound strategy” – a billion-dollar geopolitical lifeline that Beijing is determined to build through the brutal terrain of the Himalayas.