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More Funds Allocated to Renovate Tibetan Temples
The Chinese Government has allocated a total of 300 million (about 36.15 million U.S. dollars) in funds to renovate and open more than 1,400 Tibetan monasteries and temples in the past 20 years.
To date, the Central People's Government allocates four to five million yuan (482,000-602,410 U.S. dollars) for the cultural relics protection in Tibet, said the White Paper entitled "The Development of Tibetan Culture" issued Thursday.
Since the Democratic Reform, the Central People's Government has attached great importance to the protection of cultural relics 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 White Paper said that in May 1994, experts entrusted by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inspected the repaired Potala Palace and said that the design and construction of the repairs had both attained advanced world levels. They considered it "a miracle in the history of ancient building protection" and "a great contribution to the protection of Tibetan, and even world culture." In December 1994, in view of its importance and condition of protection the World Heritage Committee unanimously agreed to place the Potala Palace on the World Heritage List.
As early as in June 1959, the Tibet Cultural Relics, Historical Sites, Documents and Archives Management Committee was established to collect and protect a large number of cultural relics, archives, and ancient books and records.
At the same time, the Central People's Government assigned work teams to Lhasa, Xigaze and Shannan to conduct on-the-spot investigations of major cultural relics. A total of nine historical sites were listed among the first batch of important cultural relic sites under state-level protection by the State Council in 1961, including the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Ganden Monastery, Tibetan King's Tomb, Mount Dzong (Dzongri) Anti- British Monument in Gyangze County, and the Guge Kingdom ruins.
Even in such a special period as the "Cultural Revolution" ( 1966-1976), late Premier Zhou Enlai gave instructions personally that special measures be taken to protect major cultural relics like the Potala Palace from destruction.
The White Paper said that a series of laws and regulations enacted by the regional government have brought the work of preserving cultural relics in Tibet within the orbit of legalization and standardization. At the same time, a large contingent of cultural relic protection staff has been formed, and the ranks of such personnel are constantly growing. According to statistics, there are now more than 270 archeologists in Tibet, among whom 95 percent are Tibetans.
The White Paper said that ancient documents and archives are well preserved in Tibet. There are enormous numbers of Tibetan- language documents and archives in various categories, next in number only to the Han-Chinese language ones.
At present, there are over three million volumes in the Archives. Large-format books such as A Selection of Tibetan Historical Archives and An Inventory of the Year of the Iron-Tiger edited by the Tibet Autonomous Region Archives have been published, furnishing precious materials for research.
The government institutions at all levels in Tibet have collected over four million volumes of archives on paper, silk, wood, metal, stone and Pattra leaf. Among them, more than 90 percent are in Tibetan, and the others in a variety of languages such as Han Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, Hindi, Sanskrit, Nepalese, English and Russian.
These archives, which date from the Yuan Dynasty to contemporary times, constitute a treasure-house of chronologically complete historical records.
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