Tibet sees development & great changes: Official

Qiangba Puncog, chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region and head of China Tibet Autonomous Region Delegation, introduced the development and tremendous changes of Tibet in recent years to Canadian Parliament members, government officials, scholars and journalists at a press conference held in Ottawa on July 26. He answered questions raised by people in various circles, and also laid bare the true features of Dalai Lama who clings to "Tibet Independence", hit back groundless criticism and wanton distortion of the current situation in Tibet.

Qiangba Puncog said that the Central Government has put in over 70 billion yuan to promote Tibet 's development over the past 50 years. In the last decade, Tibet 's annual economic growth rate stood at 9 percent. He sighed with feelings about the enormous differences between the old and new Tibet. He illustrated that old Tibet did not have road, but nowadays, roads in the Roof of the World keep extending with the traffic mileage reaching 25,300 kilometers, and over 80 percent of townships and towns and about 70 percent of administrative villages have access to roads.

Qiangba Puncog remarked that the Central Government and the Tibetan local government always attach great importance to and respect the ethnic traditional culture of Tibet, and prominent achievements have been made thanks to the adoption of measures to protect and prosper the excellent Tibetan traditional culture. Fifty-two years ago, the attendance rate of school-age children was only 2 percent, and illiteracy ratio reached 95 percent. Nowadays, the enrolment ratio is up to 91.8 percent. In old Tibet under the serf system, 95 percent of Tibetan people did not know the Tibetan language, but now, 70 percent of the Tibetans are able to read. The current local government declares its plan to lower the illiteracy rate to below 5 percent in five years. The centuries-old Tibetan Archive is one of the best-preserved ethnic archives in China, and these historical documents wholly recorded that Tibet has been an inseparable part of China since ancient times.

By People's Daily Online