70 Percent of Officials in Tibet Are TibetansOver 70 percent of all officials in the Tibet Autonomous Region are Tibetans, a white paper issued Monday by the Information Office of the State Council says.The white paper, entitled "Progress in China's Human Rights Cause in 2000", mentions this when elaborating equal rights and special protection for ethnic minorities in the country. Tibet now has over 50,000 officials from ethnic minority groups. It says that laws in China protect rights of ethnic minorities to participate in the administration of State affairs on an equal footing and manage their own regions and ethnic affairs with autonomous rights. The proportions of ethnic minority representatives in China's top legislative and advisory bodies have far exceeded the proportion of ethnic minority population in the national population. The white paper says that each of the 55 ethnic minorities in China, no matter what their populations are, has its own representatives in the national committees of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). According to Chinese laws, chairperson or vice-chairpersons of the standing committee of the people's congress of an autonomous area should be from the ethnic minority group or groups exercising local autonomy. The head of an autonomous region, prefecture, or county, should be a citizen of the ethnic group exercising regional autonomy in the area concerned. The white paper cites Tibet as an example. Deputies of Tibetan and other ethnic minorities exceeded 80 percent of all the deputies to the people's congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Statistics show that populations of all ethnic minorities in China add up to over 100 million, accounting for 8.41 percent of the national population. The population of ethnic minorities exercising ethnic autonomy makes up 75 percent of all ethnic minority people. |
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