Cultural protection enhanced for small ethnic minorities

Watertown Wuzhen [Photo/Xinhua]

Part-time law-maker

The people's congress system is the fundamental political system in China, with about 2.6 million deputies at various levels.

At the pinnacle of the system sits the NPC, which supervises the State Council, China's cabinet, as well as the top court and procuratorate.

In China's political system, the NPC is the supreme organ of state power. There are nearly 3,000 deputies to the 12th NPC.

NPC deputies are part-time, and a deputy to the NPC can be the country's president or a farmer, a celebrated tycoon or a migrant worker, a lawyer or an official.

Tashi Yangjen was born into a poor family of wheat and barley farmers, and is currently a township official in the Tibetan city.

She was educated in a Tibetan school in Changzhou city in eastern Jiangsu Province and a college in Yueyang city in central Hunan Province, before becoming a primary school teacher in 2004.

The government has been sending students from Tibet to study at high schools in inland cities since 1985 in the hopes of training more professionals for the underdeveloped plateau region and boosting Tibet's development.

Currently about 20,000 students from the region are studying in inland regions, including Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu, where special Tibetan high schools are open to them. The free education has enabled hard-working Tibetan children to attend school, even if their families are poor.

Tibet has a huge task to relieve 690,000 people out of poverty between 2016 and 2020.

During the five years starting 2011, Tibet lifted more than 600,000 people from poverty.

Tashi Yangjen said she was happy that all the residents in her home village were lifted out poverty last year.