I wasn't laughing about that project, and I don't remember anyone else who was. A lot of people were surprised it hadn't been done sooner, as an assertion of Ch

I wasn't laughing about that project, and I don't remember anyone else who was. A lot of people were surprised it hadn't been done sooner, as an assertion of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. The desire to reinforce the territorial claim to Tibet was why all the considerable engineering difficulties were overcome with sufficient resources to push through the project.