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China Issues White Paper on Tibetan Culture
Full Text of the White Paper
To refute the prattling of the Dalai Lama clique that "Tibetan Culture has become extinct," the Information Office of the State Council released a White Paper on "the Development of Tibetan Culture" Thursday.
Detailing numerous facts and figures, the White Paper, which runs in 12,000 Chinese characters, said that over the past four decades and more, Tibet has made much headway in carrying forward the fine aspects of its traditional culture, while maintaining Tibetan cultural traits, and exposed the true political colors of the Dalai Lama.
Before the 1959 Democratic Reform, Tibet was a local regime practicing a system of feudal serfdom under a theocracy, and ruled by a few upper-class monks and nobles, it said.
The paper explained that throughout this period, a handful of upper-class lamas and aristocrats monopolized the means of production, culture and education and cultural and artistic pursuits were regarded as their exclusive amusements, while the serfs and slaves, who constituted 95 percent of the Tibetan population, lived in extreme poverty and were not guaranteed even the basic right of subsistence, let alone the right to enjoy culture and education.
After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Central People's Government attached great importance to the protection and development of the fine aspects of traditional Tibetan culture, the White Paper said.
In 1959, with the support of the Central Government, Tibet carried out the Democratic Reform to abolish the feudal serf system and liberate the million serfs and slaves, and implemented the ethnic regional autonomy system there step by step, it noted.
"This marked the advent of a brand-new era in the social and cultural development of Tibet, and ended the monopoly exercised over Tibetan culture by the few upper-class feudal lamas and aristocrats, making it the common legacy for all the people of Tibet to inherit and carry on," it said.
The document expounded in seven chapters on the government protection of Tibetan language, cultural relics, ancient books and records, folk customs and freedom of religion, and on the development of art, Tibetan studies, Tibetan medicine and pharmacology, education, and recreational facilities and institutions in the Tibet Autonomous Region^After the "Cultural Revolution" ended in 1978, the Central People's Government took prompt measures to repair and protect a lot of historical relics, investing more than 300 million yuan to repair and open 1,400-odd monasteries and temples in Tibet. In particular, between 1989 and 1994, the Central People's Government allocated 55 million yuan and a great quantity of gold, silver and other precious materials to repair the Potala Palace, which was unprecedented in China's history of historical relic preservation.
The state respects and safeguards the rights of the Tibetans and other ethnic groups in Tibet to live their lives and conduct social activities in accordance with their traditional customs, and the Central Government and the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region have all along paid special attention to respect for and protection of the freedom of religious belief and normal religious activities of the Tibetan people.
Tibet is today home to more than 1,700 monasteries, temples and other sites of religious activity, with over 46,000 Buddhist monks and nuns. Each year, religious activities are held and important religious festivals are celebrated on schedule in the Autonomous Region.
Culture and art are being inherited and developed in an all- round way. The regional authorities set up special bodies in 1979 for the collection, research, editing and publishing of the Life of King Gesar, an orally pass-on epic by artists. And after 20 years of effort, nearly 300 handwritten or block-printed Tibetan volumes have been collected. Among them, except 100 variant volumes, about 70 volumes have been formally published in the Tibetan language.
"This was an unprecedented achievement in protecting the Tibetan literary and art heritage, as well as in publishing history," the paper said.
-- Old Tibet had no Tibetan studies in the modern sense, no proper school, no genuine news and publishing industry, and the materials printed by the few wood-block printing houses were almost all scriptures. The only two clinics in Lhasa only served the nobles, feudal lords and upper-strata lamas. And today, historic progress has been made in all the fields mentioned above, and the Tibetan medicine and pharmacology is taking its place in the world.
The White Paper said that "it deserves careful reflection that, although Tibetan culture is developing continuously, the Dalai Lama clique is clamoring all over the world that 'Tibetan culture has become extinct,' and, on this pretext, is whipping up anti-China opinions with the backing of international antagonist forces. "
It pointed out that with the elimination of feudal serfdom, the cultural characteristics under the old system, in which Tibetan culture was monopolized by a few serf-owners was bound to become " extinct," and so was the old cultural autocracy marked by theocracy and the domination of the entire spectrum of socio- political life by religion, which was an inevitable outcome of both the historical and cultural development in Tibet.
"To prattle about the 'extinction of Tibetan culture' due to its acquisition of the new contents of the new age and to its progress and development is in essence to demand that modern Tibetan people keep the life styles and cultural values of old Tibet's feudal serfdom wholly intact," it said "This is completely ridiculous, for it goes against the tide of progress of the times and the fundamental interests of the Tibetan people," the White Paper said. With the deepening development of China's reform and opening-up and the modernization drive, especially the practice of the strategy of large-scale development of the western region, Tibet is striding toward modernization and going global with a completely new shape, and new and still greater development will certainly be achieved in Tibetan culture in this process, the White Paper concluded.
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