Scholar hails Tibet´s "Serfs Emancipation Day"

Source: Xinhua | 01-21-2009 10:43

BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- The emancipation of Tibetan serfs 50 years ago was a victory of the people, said a Chinese Tibetologist on Tuesday, one day after the regional legislature of Tibet endorsed the setting of "Serfs Emancipation Day".

On March 28, 1959, the State Council issued an order to dismiss the local government of Tibet and replace it with a preparatory committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region. On the very day, about one million serfs were freed.

"It marked the end of the old time and the rise of a new era in Tibet as it ushered in a great social change in the region," said Wang Xiaobin, a scholar with the China Tibetology Research Center.

In the 1950s, Tibet was a serfdom, which was contrary to the utopian land of "Shangri-la" depicted by British author James Hilton in his novel "The Lost Horizon", Wang said.

Under the Tibetan serfdom, serf owners, who accounted for less than five percent of the population, occupied all the cultivated land and grassland and the majority of the livestock in Tibet, according to Wang.

The owners could exploit their serfs by using their labor, levying taxes on them, and profiteering by giving loans to their serfs at an interest of 10-30 percent. Serfs, sometimes, had to repay their debts generation by generation, Wang said.

Before 1959, 80-90 percent of Tibetan serfs owed debts to their owners, and 30-40 percent of these serfs were paying debts that were borrowed by older generations, Wang said, citing a survey.