The mineral-rich mountains of Tibet are landscapes of solitude, where the greatest yogis withdrew from society to deeply realise the nature of the human mind. Those sacred landscapes and pilgrimage routes are now officially designated as mineral extraction enclaves.
Tibet until now has not linked meaningfully to the Chinese economy, and mining on a significant scale has been minimal. China's 12th Five-Year Plan for 2011 onwards however is due to change all of this, with massive investment in world scale mining of copper, gold, silver, chromium and lithium for the world's factory, with...