The Central Government’s 50 Years’ of Solicitude for Tibet

■　Vice Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee

　　Head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee

　　Executive Vice Chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification

　Du Qinglin

　　This year witnesses the 50th anniversary of the democratic reform in Tibet. Fifty years is but a blink of the eye in the long sweep of human history but, for Tibet – this expanse of ancient and mystical terrain – it has wrought a miracle unparalleled in the human world. From the stark plateau in Tibet’s north to the rich valleys of its south, and from the tents of pastoral nomads on the grasslands to the bustling lanes of Lhasa, the glittering snow-mantled plateau brims with vitality, a dynamic, and a flourishing new socialist Tibet now presents itself to the world. The great historical changes in Tibet over the past 50 years are an embodiment of the Party Central Committee’s profound concern for Tibet. The first-generation central collective leadership with Comrade Mao Zedong at the core led the Tibetan people in launching their democratic reform in conformity with their ardent desire for emancipation and liberation, and inaugurating regional ethnic autonomy. As a result, Tibet sprang from a barbaric, backward state of feudal serfdom directly to a socialist society, thus laying a firm foundation for its own regeneration. The second-generation central collective leadership with Comrade Deng Xiaoping at the core concerned itself throughout with Tibet’s development, and instituted the guiding principles of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Party Central Committee in order to accelerate the pace of Tibet’s socialist modernization and so Tibet entered a new era of reform, opening up and comprehensive development. The third-generation central collective leadership with Comrade Jiang Zemin at the core focused on political stability, economic development, social progress and consolidation of border security, created a comprehensive set of policies and measures that were suited to Tibet’s actual conditions and represented the interests of the people of all of Tibet’s ethnic groups, and further promoted the development of a new situation in Tibet’s reform, opening up and modernization. Now, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary has committed itself to fulfilling the new expectations of the Tibetan people for the blessings of life and clarified the strategic goals, concrete tasks, policies and measures for Tibet’s economic development in the new stage in the new century to ensure leapfrog economic and social development and long-term political stability in Tibet and a constant rise in the living standards of the people of all of Tibet’s ethnic groups, thereby enabling Tibet to welcome ever more splendid future prospects for its development.

　　Toppling the Feudal Serf System:

　　Millions of Serfs Rise Up

　　Pre-1959 Tibet had long been shackled by the grim and remorseless bonds of feudal serfdom. Although the number of slave owners amounted to less than 5% of the total population, they accounted for almost all of Tibet’s means of production and cultural and educational resources and monopolized Tibet’s material and spiritual wealth, while the serfs and slaves, amounting to some 95% of the total population, in addition to never-ending corvees and perpetual debt, enjoyed neither means of production nor personal freedom. Subject to inordinately cruel oppression and exploitation, there was a dearth of guarantees of even the basic right to life, let alone enjoyment of political rights; a serf’s life was barely worth a straw rope. In order to thoroughly transform the wretched lot of the masses of serfs, in 1959 the Communist Party of China resolutely overthrew the then local government of Tibet and instituted democratic reform following a rebellion by reactionary Tibetan owners of slaves and herders. The Party Central Committee upheld the principle of peaceful reform and the policy of differentiated treatment, shattered the three fetters for serfs –  personal bondage, usury and wula corvees, toppled the system of theocratic feudal serfdom, abolished the feudal hierarchical structure, the corporeal bonds and every catalog of barbaric punishment; millions of serfs were emancipated and liberated, became masters of Tibet and the nation and received concomitant grant of constitutional, legal and administrative rights and freedoms. Their status as political beasts of burden and their economic condition of abject destitution thenceforth became relics of the past. 

　　Our Party adopted effective measures and created laws, systems and policies to safeguard the Tibetan people’s political, economic and cultural rights and guarantee their autonomy to manage their own affairs in accordance with the law. The Tibet Autonomous Region officially came into existence in September 1965, and the system of regional ethnic autonomy began to be practiced at every level in Tibet, with the Tibetan people enjoying the right of autonomy in managing their own affairs from that time on. The Tibetan people actively exercise their constitutionally-conferred right to elect and be elected, participate in the elections of deputies to the National People’s Congress and to the people’s congresses at all levels in the region, and take part in the management of national and local affairs. The Party focuses strongly on building up the ranks of Tibetan-ethnic cadres, constantly raising their ability and level to exercise the right of regional autonomy. Currently, among the ranks of cadres presently employed at the provincial level in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Tibetan and other ethnic minorities make up 70.42%; the offices of Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region People’s Congress, the Chairman of the Autonomous Region, the Chairman of the region’s Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and the President of the Higher People’s Court have all been assumed by ethnic Tibetans. Within the entire region’s 74 counties (cities and districts), among the major leaders of these four leading bodies, as well as the 682 township and town Party secretaries and mayors, Tibetan and other ethnic minority cadres make up more than 86%. Tibetans and other ethnic minorities are the primary corps of the contingent of cadres and they form the primary group leading the development of new Tibet.

　　The Dalai Lama clique, with the support of anti-China forces, in disregard of the objective fact that the Tibetan people fully enjoy autonomous rights, has been clamoring here and there for years for a restoration of Tibetan “human rights,” with the vain objective of restoring the benighted feudal serf system and seeking the freedom of willfully enslaving the broad masses of serfs under their theocratic, autocratic rule. This was particularly evident last year when the Dalai Lama clique instigated the “3/14” incidents of hooliganism, vandalism, violence and crime which inflicted such grievous losses on the local people’s lives and productivity and caused local social order to sustain serious injury. Under the resolute leadership of the Party Central Committee, the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region and relevant departments upheld the banner of “preserving social stability, the socialist legal system and the fundamental interests of the people” and, in accordance with the Constitution and laws, rapidly quelled this disturbance, thus crushing the Dalai Lama clique’s separatist plot, dealing a blow to the separatists’ hubris and effectively safeguarding Tibet’s social stability and economic development.

　　Mobilizing the Entire Country to Support Tibet and

　　Promoting the Leapfrog Development of Tibet’s Economy

　　Under the feudal serf system, the masses of serfs suffered under brutal exploitation and their productive forces were correspondingly severely impaired, leading to a state where the entire Tibetan economy languished in a slump. Old Tibet was poor, ignorant and retrograde; in all this expanse of more than 1.2 million square kilometers there were only meandering byways, rope slides over gorges and single-plank bridges. Added to the crushing wula corvees came the bone-breaking, marrow-sucking usury which deprived the masses of Tibetan serfs of their all. A Tibetan proverb from the time portrays the situation: “Three knives in the serf’s body make for misery: excessive corvees, high rents and foul usury; the serf faces three roads: flee from famine, stay a serf or go begging.” This truly reflects Tibet’s economic backwardness and the life predicament of the masses of serfs. After Tibet’s peaceful liberation, in order to address the circumstance wherein Tibet, as the “Roof of the World,” lacked adequate natural resources, and had a weak self-developmental capability and a low economic level, the Party Central Committee formulated a series of special policies and preferential measures for Tibet’s economic development, did its utmost to concentrate and mobilize financial, material and human resources for Tibet’s economic development, and provided assistance to Tibet’s development at a magnificent orderly pace.

　　At the start of the 1950s, Comrade Mao Zedong called upon the PLA units in Tibet to help our fraternal minorities, brave adversity and strive to build roads. In December 1954, the Tibet-Sichuan and the Tibet-Qinghai highways traversing the Roof of the World simultaneously opened to traffic, thus inaugurating the prologue to national support of Tibet’s large-scale capital construction. Contingents arrived from all over the motherland to actively assist the Tibetans in initiating construction of such projects as those for water conservancy, factories, banks, farms and schools, and to help farmers and pastoralists develop production and, in a society long shut off from the world, gradually break up the environment of stagnation and gradually form a modern society of ambient progressive culture, and thus Tibet embarked upon a historical course to become a modern society.  

　　Since the 1980s the Party Central Committee has placed the matter of how to more rapidly develop Tibet at the top of its agenda, and successively convened four forums on Tibet work. All this has stoked mass enthusiasm for supporting Tibet’s development. The first forum on Tibet work set Tibet’s actual conditions as its starting point, introduced special policies to rejuvenate farmers and herders, develop production and maximize the tempo of wealth creation. The second forum on Tibet work proposed to accord support and assistance to Tibet in a 43-item project encompassing such aspects as its public finance, taxes, banking and foreign trade, an initiative dubbed by the Tibetan people “Project Golden Key,” thus galvanizing the people of all of the ethnic groups in Tibet. The third Tibet work forum characterized the entire nation’s support for Tibet as a political task affecting all of the Party and nation’s work and established “divided responsibility, one-to-one support and regular rotation” as the method for assisting Tibet, with construction of 62 priority construction projects – such as the Yangzhuoyong Lake Hydroelectric Power Plant – with total investment of 4.86 billion yuan. This set Tibet onto the course of rapid economic development. The fourth Tibet work forum initiated 117 priority construction projects – such as the Ti bet-Qinghai Railway – with total investment of 32.09 billion yuan and expanded one-to-one-support to every county in Tibet.

　　In January 2007, the Central Committee instituted 180 of the projects planned for Tibet per the 11th Five-Year Plan, with a total investment of 109.76 billion yuan. Currently, the overall picture for national direct construction investment projects, direct central government subsidies and the one-to-one multi-directional support implemented nationwide for Tibet’s modernization has already taken shape. The construction of a large number of key projects such as the Yangbajing Hot Springs Project, the comprehensive development project on the Yarlung Zangbo, Lhasa and Nyang Qu rivers, the Ngari Baiwanshan Cashmere Center and Lhasa Gongga Airport as well as the influx of substantial aid funds have greatly increased Tibet’s self-development capacity. The completion of the Tibet-Qinghai Railway, in particular, brought to an end Tibet’s historical condition as a land without railways and has exercised a direct and enormous pulling effect, creating a tow-line for advancing Tibetan prosperity, politics, economics, ecology and the people’s wellbeing.

　　For the last 50 years, under the guidance of the Party Central Committee and with the support of the people of the entire nation and the unflagging efforts of the people of all of Tibet’s ethnic groups, this snow-mantled plateau has taken wing, realizing accomplishments that have drawn the world’s attention. In 1959 when democratic reform was just introduced, Tibet’s GDP stood at a paltry 174 million yuan; by 2007 this had increased to 34.219 billion yuan which, according to comparable prices, represents a 59-fold increase, with an average annual growth rate of 8.9%. In 2008, Tibet’s agriculture and animal husbandry entered their 21st consecutive year of bountiful harvests, and the net income of farmers and herders reached a per capita 3,176 yuan, representing an increase of 13.6% and being the 6th consecutive year scoring double-digit growth. Tibet has bid a full farewell to a closed natural economy, and now boasts a modern industrial system like never before; infrastructure construction is flourishing and emerging industries developing like wildfire, while the standards of living of farmers and herders constantly rise as the region strides towards peace, health and prosperity.

　　Preserving and Promoting the Culture of

　　 the Snow-Covered Plateau and Reviving the Ancient Civilization

　　Tibet’s unique geographical environment and long-standing social history together conceived Tibetan culture that is vast and profound, flows back to an age-old source, and serves as the spiritual mainstay for generation after generation of Tibetans. It is also a glittering pearl in the treasure hoard of Chinese culture and bursting exotic bloom in human cultural history. Nevertheless, in old Tibet only the upper-class aristocracy and the minority priestly classes enjoyed the right to study written Tibetan language. More than 95% of the population of the masses of serfs and slaves had essentially no entitlement to study written Tibetan language; thus ignorance and superstition proliferated and Tibetan culture became mired in a slough of despond and decline. Democratic reform ended the history of monopoly of culture and education by the minority of upper-class feudal lords and monks and extended true enjoyment of the right to receive culture and education to farmers and herders, who became the curators, developers and masters enjoying Tibetan culture, and Tibet’s national identity and superlative cultural traditions now receive full respect and are explored and preserved. This opens up broad new vistas for the development of Tibetan culture.

　　The Party Central Committee effectively guarantees and supports the right of the Tibetan people to study, use and develop their spoken and written language and has founded the Language Steering Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region to actively encourage, support and organize study and use of Tibetan among all ethnic masses in Tibet. The government is implementing a bilingual educational system in Tibet’s universities and primary and secondary schools with Tibetan as the primary language of instruction, and strengthening Tibetan-language instruction. Presently, oral and written Tibetan language enjoys wide use at every level in social life in Tibet; all official policy and legal documents issued by government departments at every level, all signs and notices in public places, radio and TV, newspapers and magazines and websites are bilingual, using both Chinese and Tibetan languages and scripts.

　　In order to succeed to and carry forward the fine cultural legacy, the Party Central Committee has founded an organization for rescuing, collating and researching ethnic culture, which shall in the future include searching for, collecting, compiling and researching such literary and artistic materials as folk drama, dance, music, quyi and folk songs. Since 2003, the project to protect intangible cultural relics has come into implementation and edited and published Tibetan collections of 10 large volumes of Chinese operas, Chinese ballads and other books on Chinese culture and art, thus bringing an end to the history of Tibetan cultural and artistic works going unrecorded. In particular, the Party Central Committee has created a dedicated organization to rescue at all levels and compile The Life of King Gesar, which is known as the “King of the World Epic.” With the concern and support of the government, traditional and modern Tibetan art constantly develop during the course of their integration, and a large number of works with new themes, prominent ethnic characteristics and a strong flavor of the times such as poetry, novels, dance, music, fine arts, film and photography, thus elevating the overall level of Tibetan art, and highly enriching and enlivening the cultural lives of the masses of all ethnic groups in Tibet. Tibetan ethnic medicine and pharmacology are reaching the entire nation, gradually becoming popular among people nationwide and also spreading to the outside world.

　　As traditional Tibetan culture, Tibetan Buddhism also receives effective government protection. Since the 1980s, the government has successively devoted more than 700 million yuan to ensuring repair and renovation of Tibet’s monasteries, cairns, temples and other places for religious activities. In particular, from 1989 to 1994, the government committed more than 55 million yuan and large quantities of gold and silver for the repair and renovation of the Potala Palace, an amount unprecedented in New China’s history of preservation of historical relics. Beginning in 2001, the government again disbursed 330 million yuan for preservation of such major relics as the Potala Palace, the Norbulingka and Sakya Monastery. These have been the largest projects for preservation of cultural relics in Tibet since the establishment of New China, are to a degree rarely seen in the history of preservation of cultural relics throughout the entire world, and are thus characterized as a “a miracle in the history of preservation of antiquities.”

　　The government respects the religious beliefs of the Tibetan people, and protects Tibet’s religious activities with rich content and in diverse forms. Traditional religious activities such as sutra studies and debates and conferring of academic degrees are carried out at Tibetan monasteries as usual. Believers often circumambulate monasteries and sacred places and go on pilgrimages, and are free every year to participate in all manner of religious festivals. Such traditional Tibetan Buddhist features as reincarnation of living Buddhas receives respect from the government, and the State Administration for Religious Affairs has specially promulgated the Administrative Procedures for Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Traditional Tibetan Buddhism. The government has further established the China Tibetan-Language Academy of Buddhism. The academy works in tandem with the Tibetan Buddhism Academy and the Tibetan-language sutra printing shop established by the Tibet branch of the Buddhist Association of China to train senior Tibetan Buddhist personnel.

　　Comprehensively Strengthening Social Development:

　　Tibet Assuming New Look

　　In old Tibet, under the rule by the serf-owning classes, regardless of whether economic and cultural development or science, education and medicine, all were in a state of extreme benightedness and backwardness. Prior to democratic reform, Tibet did not have even one school in the modern sense, no modern scientific research or medical institution, and the masses of farmers and herders enjoyed no social security whatsoever; the percentage of school-age children attending school was less than 2%, and the rate of illiteracy among young and middle-aged persons was more than 95%. Among the million-plus population of Tibet at that time, the average number of medical practitioners for every 1,000 persons was 0.4, and the populace was bogged down in long-term stagnation. Old Tibet’s long system of theocratic feudal serfdom stifled the vigor and vitality of social development. 

　　In order to transform the severe backwardness of Tibet’s social tableau, the democratic reform under the leadership of the Communist Party of China thoroughly abolished all special social privileges enjoyed by the serf owners, smashed Tibet’s long-subsisting, retrograde condition of isolation and stagnation, resolutely promoted the bestowal of modern education, science, health and medical services on the Tibetan masses and advanced Tibetan social progress at every level. The central government has always set Tibetan education as a strategic priority. From 1952 to 2007, the government devoted a total of 22.562 billion yuan to assist in the development of Tibetan education. Beginning in 1985, the children of farmers and herders subject to compulsory education were the recipients of measures to “guarantee food, housing and tuition.” In 2007, all miscellaneous school fees were exempted for primary and secondary students, and Tibet thereby became the first area in the entire nation to institute free compulsory education. As of the present, the government has detailed more than 7,000 teachers to aid Tibet. Currently, a relatively consummate system has come into being encompassing regular education, kindergarten education, adult education, vocational education and special education.

　　The central government has offered full support for development of modern science and technology in Tibet, established more than 80 scientific research institutes, technology demonstration bases and centers and major laboratories of all kinds. Just in the years from 2000 to 2007, Tibet completed 613 major scientific research projects, among which 148 were national-level primary projects. In particular, projects in the fields of prevention of geological disasters, development and exploitation of clean energy and plateau medical research occupied a leading position in the nation and indeed the world. A large contingent of such human talents as doctoral and masters degree holders, scientists and engineers have emerged, thus creating a new force for Tibet’s development. The central government has made great efforts to promote establishment of a basic system of urban hospitals providing one-to-one support for rural hospitals, fully established a medical system for Tibet’s agricultural and pastoral areas based on free medical care, and helped establish a system to provide succor for the lives of particularly vulnerable groups. In 2006, governments at various levels allocated 280 million yuan for the purpose of guaranteeing provision of free medical services for farmers and herders and assisting especially vulnerable groups. In 2007, the Tibet Autonomous Region again greatly increased the standard for subsidies for reimbursing the medical costs of farmers and herders, raising the standard for total amount of reimbursement subsidies per person per year from 3,000 yuan to 6,000 or 8,000 yuan. Today’s Tibet has already established everywhere a network of medical services integrating Chinese, Western and Tibetan medicine, with Lhasa serving as the hub. The average life expectancy in Tibet prior to democratic reform was 35.5 years; this has now risen to 67, and the total population also greatly increased from the 1 million of 1953 to 2.8415 million of 2007, thus thoroughly transforming the condition of old Tibet’s long-term population growth stagnation.

　　The central government has always emphasized ecological conservation in Tibet and the sustainable use of its natural resources, constantly increasing the scope of ecological and environmental protection. Large sums are invested each year in construction and development of major ecological projects. Efforts are made to promote the extensive use of clean energy in agricultural and pastoral areas, formulate sound policies, laws and regulations, and create a supervisory administrative mechanism for effective protection of the environment and treatment of pollution. As a result, Tibet’s natural resources and wild flora and fauna all receive effective protection. During the period of the 11th Five-Year Plan, the central government will further invest more than 10 billion yuan to construct an ecological safety barrier for the Tibetan Plateau and plans to invest 22.7 billion yuan by mid-century on 160 major eco-protection projects, to provide further protection of and improvements to Tibet’s ecology and environment. Analysis of environmental statistics indicates that Tibet’s ecology remains in an essentially pristine condition and environmentally Tibet is thus one of the best places in the nation. In present-day Tibet, not only are the mountains and streams elegant in their beauty and the rivers limpid and pure and vegetation lush, but there is also economic development and social progress, the people live and work in peace and contentment and thus Tibet is truly worthy of the sobriquet “Shangri-la.”

　　The magnificent Himalayan Mountains bear witness to the affection and concern of the Party Central Committee towards the people of Tibet. The Yarlung Zangbo River surges unceasingly, intoning a lively air to Tibet’s development and progress. The dazzling accomplishments of Tibet in the last 50 years eloquently attest that the Communist Party of China truly stands for the wellbeing of the people of all of Tibet’s ethnic groups, that the leadership of the Communist Party of China provides the fundamental guarantee for development of and progress in all of Tibet’s undertakings, that the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the avenue to common affluence and prosperity for the people of all of Tibet’s ethnic groups, and that the system of regional ethnic autonomy is the best guarantee of the people of all of Tibet’s ethnic groups to be masters of the country. We believe that, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and the guidance of the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, within the great family of the Chinese nation, Tibet can certainly achieve leapfrog development while maintaining long-term political stability, and that the people of all of Tibet’s ethnic groups will face ever more rosy and prosperous prospects for tomorrow!