PLA Soldiers Create 200 Firsts in Tibet ����Over the past 40 years since democratic reforms in Tibet, the officers and men of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) stationed in Tibet, while painstakingly garrisoning the frontier, have been actively making contributions to Tibet's economic prosperity and social development, and have created 200 firsts in the "Roof of the World". ����In pre-democratic reform Tibet, industry, communications, energy, medical and health service, culture and education were non-existent, and only qingke (highland barley) and rye could be cultivated for agriculture. The PLA men smashed the feudal serf system in Tibet and returned the democratic right to Tibetan compatriots, at the same time, they started large-scale economic and cultural construction: building the first highway, the first airport, opening the first air route, setting up the first factory, school, hospital and farm, constructing the first hydropower station and satellite ground station, laying the first communication cable, etc. During the 1990s, in the Dazi production base of the Tibetan Military Command Area alone, the PLA has created 50 firsts in Tibetan history of cultivation, and fish breeding and poultry raising and has transformed 36 firsts of which into productive forces and spread them to the whole of Tibet. ����These "firsts" created by the PLA in Tibet have played an exemplary and vanguard role in the region's cultural and ethical progress and material development and have exerted enormous influence on Tibet's economic prosperity and social development. Before democratic reforms, vegetables and fruit were rare products placed on the table for the upper nobles. After its entry into the region, the PLA introduced some 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables and succeeded in trial production of the products in Tibet. Today, ordinary people in Tibet can eat fresh vegetables in all seasons of the year. In agriculture, PLA soldiers have successfully trial grown wheat, rape, corn, broad bean and other crops from the inland, thus changing the local cultivation structure. In the past, Tibetan people used butter to light the lamp and pine branch for lighting generation after generation. Beginning from 1960 when the PLA men built the first hydropower station in the Roof of the World, they have since then successively completed 147 hydropower stations in Tibet, initially solving the problem of power supply for industrial and agricultural production and power consumption by the local people. In the past, not a single piece of match could be produced in Tibet, in 1998 gross domestic product (GDP) reached nearly 8.86 billion yuan. Chen Kuiyuan, secretary of the Party committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region, told the reporter that Tibet's 40 years of historic changes represent the brilliant achievements made by people's soldiers in their pioneering work. ����It is reported that in the process of creating these achievements, the PLA soldiers have also made tremendous sacrifices: in the environment which has 40 percent oxygen deficiency and X ray radiation quantity eight times that of the inland, hundreds of thousands of officers and men have contributed their youth, and more than 4,000 have laid down their lives. In July 1990, when General Secretary Jiang Zemin paid an inspection tour of Tibet, he praised the PLA soldiers stationed in Tibet for their special capabilities of bearing hardships, being patient, fighting and doing pioneering work. Today, the new generation of PLA soldiers stationed in Tibet are inheriting and carrying forward the spirit of their predecessors in Tibet and they are found writing new chapters about their pioneering work in their frontier guard posts, at the peak of snow-clad mountains and in the construction sites of various key projects. HomeNews 1999-07-13 Page3 Full Story in Chinese