For over five decades, Qamdo, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, has achieved faster growth and further progress in traffic, agriculture, water conservation, electricity and other infrastructures. The living standards of people in Qamdo Prefecture also improve greatly.

In the old days, Tibet had no roads in the modern sense. Tibet people used to carry goods by themselves or use pack animals, and mail was delivered by courier stations. This is now history. Currently, with an increase of 4,048 kilometers for three years, Qamdo Prefecture has a total highway length of 13,900 kilometers. Besides, except only one county, every county and township now has access to road transportation. Tengchen County and Banbar County will be accessible by tarmac roads at the end of this year.

In terms of aviation, in 1995, Bamda Airport- the highest airport in the world began operation. Bamda Airport transported 314,100 people from 1995 to 2005. There were 40,800 passengers transported in 2008. In 2014, a total of 201,900 passengers were transported via the region, which topped 200,000 people for the first time. 

In recent years, Qamdo focused on the development of water conservancy. Until now, Qamdo has launched the comprehensive planning projects of 23 river basins, among which 15 projects have been finished. In addition, currently, there were 3,865 safe drinking water projects in rural areas and 76 embankments. Besides, 49 river regulation works were completed and 11 mountain flood disasters were controlled. With 370 channels for irrigation and 678 ponds, local farmland irrigation area increased to 297,000 mu (1mu= 667 square meters) from 254,000 mu in 2009.

On Mar.3, 2014, with an investment of 6.63 billion yuan (1.43 billion U.S. dollars) in total, the Sichuan-Tibet network project was launched. On Nov. 20, 2014, this 1,521-kilometer-long project was operated in advance, which ended the history of isolated network operation in Qamdo Prefecture and solved the local blackouts.

At present, Qamdo develops the telephone services, broadband communication, emergency communication and other projects. The number of households using landline telephone in administrative villages reached 93.4 percent and there were 51 telephones for every 100 people. The number of households with Internet connections users was 114,400, with a coverage rate of 15.1 percent.

Since 2012, aiming to improve the livelihood, Qamdo Prefecture, focusing on the development of old section in Qamdo Town, invested 6.9 billion yuan (about 1.8 billion U.S. dollars) to urban renewal project. Until now, with a total of 27,000 square kilometers in housing demolition, there were over 1,300 relocate residents. This urban renewal project has been finished over 90 percent and the construction layout of it has been basically formed.