And for a leadership already grappling with separatist movements in the western regions Tibet and Xinjiang, any sort of successful independence movement would set an unthinkable precedent.
He described harsh government controls in restive Xinjiang and Tibet as "ridiculous national policy", and also attacked a now-disgraced security tsar for abuse of power, before his downfall.
Tibet was connected to the conventional network only in 2006 after a remarkable feat of engineering involving track laid on permafrost.Even some residents of Qinghai and Xinjiang seem unclear about the new rail line, most of which looks almost complete.
Pyongyang shut the park this month in a strikingly belligerent outburst of rage against the West.Clashes in China's Xinjiang region left 21 people dead, including 15 police officers and officials.
In Xinjiang some residents seem unaware that the track will go through Qinghai.
This is to distinguish it from a conventional line from Lanzhou to Xinjiang (the first syllables of which form the name Lanxin) that was completed in 1962.
Some Uighurs want to make Xinjiang an independent "East Turkestan".
It stretches 1,776km from Lanzhou, the capital of the western province of Gansu, to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, an "autonomous region" bordering on Central Asia.
Officials say terrorist threats have been directed at the Xinjiang leg, and a recent incident in Beijing's Tiananmen Square has been blamed on Uighur "terrorists" (see article).
Hundreds of kilometres of track are being laid to connect the country's bullet-train network with Xinjiang, a region bordering on Central Asia.
Whether by error or design, Mrs Merkel gave him an 18th-century map that excluded Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and Manchuria from China's domains; it also seemed to exclude the islands of Taiwan and Hainan.
