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.