The Information Office of the State Council issued in Beijing Thursday a white paper entitled "Tibet's March Toward Modernization", which reviews the modernization drive in Tibet over the past 50 years.

The white paper is expected to help the international community enhance the comprehensive understanding of the history and reality of Tibet.

The 16,000-word white paper is composed of three parts: the Rapid Social Development in Tibet, Tibet's Modernization Achievements, the Historical Inevitability of Tibet's Modernization.

Employing lots of facts and the latest statistics, the white paper shows that Tibet has kept marching forward along the road tomodernization and made significant achievements that have attracted worldwide attention, under the leadership of the CentralGovernment and with the aid from the rest of the country and the unremitting efforts of the people of all ethnic groups in the region.

The white paper says modernization has been the fundamental issue in the social development of Tibet in modern times. The feudal serfdom under theocracy, which had lasted for several hundred years in Tibet, stifled the development of the social productive forces of Tibet, seriously hindered social progress, and relegated Tibet to the state of extreme poverty, backwardness , isolation and decline, to the point of verging on total collapse.