Scholar hails Tibet´s "Serfs Emancipation Day"

The old Tibetan law divided Tibetans into three classes, in nine grades. The inferiors had to be punished if they offended the superiors.

Under the old law, the cost of a first-grade superior was equal to gold weighed as much as his corpse, while the cost of the ninth-grade inferior was a straw rope, Wang said.

After March 28, 1959, serfdom-based feudal regimes of all levels were toppled and the people's democratic rule was established in Tibet. The Democratic Reform was launched, in which the liberated serfs were given cultivated land and cattle, for the first time in their lives.

In 1961, the first-ever elections of people's congresses of different levels were held in Tibet, with all former serfs and slaves allowed to use their rights of electing or being elected.

In 2002, 93.09 percent voters in Tibet joined in the elections, while in some areas, the voting rate was 100 percent. Minority lawmakers made up over 80 percent of the total at the regional and prefectural levels and over 90 percent of the total at the county and town levels.

Since 1959, all the chairpersons of the regional people's political consultative conferences are Tibetans.

Currently, 87.5 percent of chairperson and vice chairpersons of the regional legislature, 69.9 percent of regional legislature's standing committee members, and 53.3 percent of chairman and chairpersons of the regional government are Tibetans or other ethnic minorities, according to Wang.

Meanwhile, some former Tibetan aristocrats have been appointed leading officials at regional levels, and some of them are working together with their former serfs.

Since 1965, the year the Tibet Autonomous Region was founded, two major classes -- serfs and serf owners -- in Tibet have vanished forever as there has been a fundamental change in the nature of the regime.

Over the past 50 years, Tibet has promulgated and implemented 10 five-year plans for economic and social development. Under the care of the central authorities and the support by the whole country, Tibet has had local infrastructure improved and people's living standards largely enhanced. A number of Tibetan millionaires have emerged in Tibet, according to Wang.

In 2007, the GDP of Tibet topped 30 billion yuan (4.38 billion U.S. dollars), with an averaged per-capita income of over 12,000 yuan, and the regional financial income exceeded 2 billion yuan.

Editor:Zhang Ning