Is China's western land worth anything?

Is China's western land worth anything?

It’s worth nothing.
It’s worth everything.

Look at where people live in China:

From this map, you can see that the western regions are fairly unpopulated. Because most of the land cannot support agriculture and therefore a large population. Because most of the land looks like this:

內蒙 Inner Mongolia

甘肅 Gansu (Kansu)

青海 Qinghai (Chi’inghai)

新疆 Xinjiang (Sinkiang)

西藏 Tibet

Since practically no one lives in the western lands, there is insignificant economic output.

Sure, there is trade for centuries (such as via the Silk Road), but most trade is now conducted via sea lanes anyway or by air. Overland trade in Western China is very harsh and comparatively expensive.

Sure, there are natural resources like oil and minerals, but it’s cheaper for China to import from elsewhere (like Russia) than to develop these resources.

Sure, there’s tourism, but a vacation in Western China is the polar opposite of a stroll through Disneyland. Not a lot of people will go visit.

Overall, the economic contribution is insignificant compared to the wealth generation engines of the east coast or even the Sichuan basin.

It’s worth nothing.

However, the Himalayan Range is a natural fortification for China. It makes sense for China to control this space right up to this natural great wall. The Tibetan plateau also doubles as a buffer zone, in case the primary defensive line had been breached. This is why the Taklamakan Desert is fully under Chinese control. These are encapsulated in a military term: strategic depth, a vast inhospitable land that is a buffer zone to defend the heartland from foreign threats.

Because it takes time to traverse these distances, even with supersonic military aircraft, it provides China with precious time to respond to attacks or incursions. Without strategic depth, China would have had to maintain a much more aggressive military, like Israel.

If we imagine the vast inhospitable land as ocean, China would be an island:

The Tibetan plateau is also strategic because it towers over the most populous parts of China, making it an ideal place for militaries to use rockets and even just artillery to threaten the entire country. Just as Israel would never relinquish the Golan Heights, China would never abandon Tibet.

Finally, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau are the source of many major rivers in Asia. Securing them has direct economic benefits, and hard soft power bargaining chips with its neighbours. But most important of all: the two rivers that are responsible for the possibility of Chinese civilisation in the first place originate from Tibet. These are the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. Without Tibet, there would be no China.

It’s worth everything.