Development and progress of Tibet

Editor's note: The Information Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, on Tuesday published a white paper titled the Development and Progress of Tibet. Following is the full text filed by the Xinhua News Agency.

Photo taken on Oct 16, 2013 shows the Potala Palace in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. [Photo / Xinhua]

Foreword

Tibet is located in the southern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and stands at the southwestern border of China. It is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China.

Tibet has been an integral part of China since ancient times. Prior to the 1950s, Tibet was a society of feudal serfdom under theocratic rule, a society characterized by a combination of political and religious powers. Government officials, aristocrats and monasteries collectively maintained tight control over Tibet's resources and wealth, and the Tibetan people lived in dire misery without any freedom. At that time, Tibet was as dark and backward as medieval Europe.

The founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 marked Tibet's entry into modern civilization. After a series of important historical stages, from its peaceful liberation and democratic reform to the establishment of the autonomous region and the reform and opening-up drive, Tibet has steered itself into a fast lane of development together with the rest of China.

Half a century later, Tibet is a world totally different from its old self before the 1950s. The Tibetan people have gained freedom, equality and dignity, and are fully enjoying the fruits of modern civilization. They are working hard in unison toward the building of a united, democratic, affluent, culturally and ethically advanced and harmonious socialist society in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The development and progress in Tibet is in accord with the rules for the development of human society, and reflects the mutual aspirations of the people of all ethnic groups in Tibet. It is the natural result of the overall development and progress of China as a whole. The development and progress of Tibet mirrors the victory of human society's enterprising spirit and creativity in the quest for justice and happiness, and has proved the inevitability of history.

I.

The Development and Progress in Tibet Is the Inevitable Result of History

The development and progress in modern Tibet results from the innate logic of its social and historical environment, and has its roots in China's progress in a larger context. Its development is in line with the advance of world's modern civilization. Prior to 1959, Tibet was a typical society of feudal serfdom under a theocracy, characterized by a combination of political and religious powers. The development and progress in Tibet began right from the ruins of feudal serfdom.

Tibetan society prior to 1959

There is plenty of literature describing the situation of Tibetan society before 1959. From the following excerpts one can have a glimpse at the darkness and backwardness of old Tibet.

In his 1905 book The Unveiling of Lhasa, former British journalist in India Edmund Candler, who worked for the Daily Mail, recorded the details of the old Tibetan society:

Old Tibet "is governed on the feudal system. The monks are the overlords, the peasantry their serfs." "... at present, the people are medieval, not only in their system of government and their religion, their inquisition, their witchcraft, their incarnations, their ordeals by fire and boiling oil, but in every aspect of their daily life." "... he toils a lifetime to win by his own labour and in scanty measure the necessaries ..." Lhasa was "squalid and filthy beyond description, undrained and unpaved. Not a single house looked clean or cared for. The streets after rain are nothing but pools of stagnant water frequented by pigs and dogs searching for refuse."

In Portrait of A Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth, a 1940s work by Charles Bell, the British Tibetologist made observations of the harsh punishments in Tibet: "At the same time the Tibetan criminal code is drastic. In addition to fines and imprisonment, floggings are frequent, not only of people after they have been convicted of an offence, but also of accused persons, and indeed witnesses, during the course of the trial. For serious offences, use is made of the pillory as well as of the cangue, which latter is a heavy square wooden board round the neck. Iron fetters are fastened on the legs of murderers and inveterate burglars. For every serious or repeated offences, such as murder, violent robbery, repeated thefts, or serious forgery, the hand may be cut off at the wrist, the nose sliced off, or even the eyes gouged out, the last more likely for some heinous political crime. In former days those convicted of murder were put into a leather sack, which was sewn up and thrown into a river."

The Canadian Tibetologist A. Tom Grunfeld published The Making of Modern Tibet in 1987. In it he wrote: "Tibetans were ruled by an unusual form of feudal theocracy.... The heads of the feudal estates maintained a monopoly of power over all local matters. Serfs were 'tied' to their masters.... So powerless were they that they required permission to enter a monastery and even to marry. If two serfs of different lords married, the male offspring reverted to the father's lord, while the female offspring went to the mother's. Permission to leave the estate -- even for the briefest period -- for such matters as family visits, pilgrimages or for some sideline trading required the consent of the lord. Historically there was very little class mobility in Tibet, and for the most part serfs were forced to accept the position they found themselves in upon birth. There is no evidence to support the images of a utopian Shangri-la."

Two Chinese officials, Shen Zonglian and Liu Shengqi, who worked at the Chinese government's Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission's Tibet office before 1949, wrote in their 1953 book Tibet and Tibetans: "The men who have been running the Lhasa government are drawn from the top class of fewer than a hundred still flourishing noble families and an ecclesiastical hierarchy of equal size. To them the Tibetan masses are the 'hewers of wood and drawers of water.'Cut off completely from world trends and from all the dormant social forces in Tibet, and basking in the waning sunshine of a theocratic-feudalistic autocracy, this privileged class can exist only on the ignorance and political lethargy of the Tibetans. Their privileged status is bound to collapse in this fast-changing world, and the process is only going to be accelerated."

For centuries Tibetan society was mired in stagnation due to its backward serfdom and the isolated geographic location of Tibet. By the middle of the 20th century, when humanity was leaping toward modern civilization, Tibet still lagged far behind the rest of the world.