VI. Equal Rights and Special Protection
for Ethnic Minorities
In China, ethnic minorities enjoy not only all the rights
citizens are entitled to by the Constitution and laws as the Han people do, but also the
special rights enjoyed only by ethnic minorities according to law. To guarantee the equal
rights and special rights and interests of ethnic minorities, China practices a system of
regional ethnic autonomy in ethnic minority areas. In February 2001, the Standing
Committee of the Ninth NPC made amendments to the Law Governing Regional Ethnic Autonomy,
upgrading the system of regional ethnic autonomy as part of the basic political system of
China. New stipulations added in the Law include: carrying out necessary special policies
in the ethnic autonomous areas, and increasing investments in and accelerating the
development of these areas, which have further strengthened the legal guarantee of
autonomy in the autonomous areas. According to statistics, the 55 ethnic minorities in
China have a combined population of more than 100 million, or 8.41 percent of the
country's total population, of which 75 percent enjoy regional ethnic autonomy.
The right of ethnic minorities to participate in the administration of state affairs on an
equal footing and the autonomous right to manage their own regions and affairs are
safeguarded by law. In the NPC and the CPPCC National Committee of successive terms, the
percentage of ethnic minority representatives has far exceeded the proportion of the
ethnic minority population in the national population, and each of the 55 ethnic
minorities, no matter what their populations, has its own representatives. There are
altogether 428 ethnic minority deputies to the Ninth NPC and 257 ethnic minority members
on the CPPCC Ninth National Committee, accounting for 14.37 percent and 11.7 percent of
the total, respectively. Among the chairperson or vice- chairpersons of the standing
committee of the people's congress of an autonomous area there shall be one or more
citizens of the ethnic group or groups exercising regional autonomy in the area concerned.
The head of an autonomous region, autonomous prefecture or autonomous county shall be a
citizen of the ethnic group exercising regional autonomy in the area concerned, and the
other members of the people's governments of these regions, prefectures and counties shall
include members of the ethnic group exercising regional autonomy as well as members of
other ethnic minorities so far as it is reasonable. By the end of 1999, there were
altogether 2.824 million ethnic minority cadres. In 2000, there were over 50, 000 ethnic
minority cadres in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and Tibetan cadres accounted for over 70
percent of the total number of cadres there. Tibetan deputies and those of other ethnic
minorities exceeded 80 percent of the total number of deputies to the people's congresses
of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The state implements an assistance policy toward the economic and social development of
the minority regions, by providing funding, technology and personnel to promote the
economic and social development and the improvement of the people's living standard in
those regions. In 2000, the GDP of these regions increased by an average of 8.1 percent,
compared with the previous year. This rate has been higher than that of the national
average since 1997. The financial revenue of these regions increased by 14. 2 percent over
that of the year before; and the total volume of retail sales of consumption goods
increased by 9.0 percent over that of the previous year. From 1994 to 1999, the minority
regions had solved the problems of food and clothing for over 30 million poverty-stricken
people. In recent years, the annual financial set- quota subsidy from the Central
Government to Tibet has been over 1. 2 billion yuan annually. The 62 aid-Tibet projects
with a total investment of 4.6 billion yuan and another 716 projects, with a total
investment of 3.2 billion yuan from ministries, commissions and other central government
institutions, and 15 provinces and municipalities have been completed and put to use.
According to statistics, the length of highways in Tibet has reached 25,000 km; the total
installed capacity of electricity has reached 340,000 kw; and all counties in Tibet have
set up telephone systems connected with the national one. An infrastructure suited to the
development of a market economy is now in initial shape in Tibet. The GDP of Tibet has
surpassed the ten billion yuan mark, and the growth rate of the region's economy has
exceeded the national average for six years running, at 10.7 percent annually. There have
been bumper harvests for the past 13 years, and now the Tibetans can support themselves
with the grain, oil and meat produced by themselves. Nowadays, 98 percent of the
commodities in Tibet are in excess of demand, a sharp contrast to the old days when 80
percent of needed goods in Tibet had to be transferred from the inland areas. The number
of absolutely poor people in Tibet has been reduced from the 480,000 in 1994 to the
present 70,000. Most of the people in Tibet today are fast on their way to living a
relatively comfortable life.
The state makes great efforts to support the ethnic minority regions in developing
education, and has set aside special subsidies and funds for this purpose. In 2000, the
government began to carry out the "Project for Schools in Eastern Regions to Aid
Schools in Poverty-Stricken Areas in the West" and the " Project for Large and
Medium Cities in the West Aiding Schools in Poverty-stricken Areas in Their Own Provinces
(Autonomous Regions or Municipalities)." Besides, the government worked out the
" Proposals on Accelerating the Reform and Development of Vocational Education in
Ethnic Minority Regions and Regional Ethnic Autonomy Areas," demanding that measures
be taken to establish and perfect an effective system and safeguard mechanism for
investment in vocational education development in ethnic minority regions and to train
teachers and management personnel for these regions. According to statistics, in 2000
there were 925,000 full-time ethnic minority teachers and 18.5249 million ethnic minority
students in schools of all levels and types across the country. Minority students in
primary schools, middle schools and colleges accounted for 9.08 percent, 6.77 percent and
5.71 percent, respectively, of the total number of students in those schools. Now all the
55 ethnic minorities have their own college students, and some even are master's and
doctor's degree holders. Since the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951, the state has
poured over one billion yuan into the development of education in Tibet. The state has not
only set up Tibetan secondary and primary schools in inland regions, and Tibetan classes
at inland universities, but it has also set up four universities and more than 1,000
secondary and primary schools in Tibet, bringing the attendance rate of Tibetan school-age
children to 85.8 percent from less than 2 percent before 1951, and has trained over 30,000
personnel in various skills for Tibet.
The state safeguards the freedom of the ethnic minorities to utilize and develop their own
languages. The organs of self- government in autonomous areas may use one or several
languages commonly used in the locality, according to law, in performing their functions,
in film, radio and television, and in books, newspapers and magazines. Since the 1950s,
the Chinese government has helped over 10 ethnic minorities create and improve scripts of
their own choice on the principle of voluntariness. Nowadays, 53 of the 55 ethnic
minorities across the country have their own languages, including over 80 dialects; 21
ethnic minorities have a total of 27 scripts of their own in current use, which are all
computer-readable; and many of the minorities have radio, film, television, books and
periodicals in their own languages. The state helps the minority regions to institute
teaching in the local languages or bilingual teaching and to enhance the editing of
teaching materials in minority languages. Primary and middle schools in Tibet teach in the
Tibetan language or in both the Tibetan and Chinese languages, and all the 181 textbooks,
122 teaching reference books and 16 syllabi of 16 courses used in schools from the primary
to the senior high have been translated into Tibetan. After the establishment of the
Mongolian Language Net, the first Tibetan language net in the world -- the Tongyuan
Tibetan Language Net -- was established in December 1999 at the Northwest Institute for
Ethnic Minorities in Lanzhou, Gansu Province.
The Chinese government sets store by protecting and developing the traditional cultures of
ethnic minorities, and respects their folkways and customs in such aspects as diet,
marriage, funeral, festival celebration and religious belief. In February 2000, the
Ministry of Culture and State Commission of Ethnic Affairs jointly promulgated the
"Proposals on Further Strengthening Ethnic Minority-related Cultural Work,"
stressing the need to protect the unique traditional cultures and rich cultural heritages
of all the ethnic minorities and set up ethnic minority cultural and ecological
preservation zones where possible, at the same time demanding that the Han-inhabited
eastern developed regions increase their assistance to the minority-inhabited western
regions in their projects for cultural development. To date, 24 art universities and
colleges across the country have opened classes specially for training artists of minority
origin, and all the colleges for ethnic minorities and some middle schools and colleges in
autonomous areas have also offered special courses of study on minority literature, music,
dance and fine arts. Since the 1990s, the central and local budgets have earmarked special
subsides and funds for building, extending or repairing a number of libraries, cultural
centers, cultural clubs, museums, cinemas and theaters. In recent years, the central and
Tibetan regional governments have spent nearly 300 million yuan to repair and protect the
Potala Palace, Sakya Monastery, Jokhang Temple and Drepung Monastery, the Guge Kingdom
ruins in Ngari, and other important cultural and historical sites. At present, there are
over 50 Tibetan studies institutes nationwide with over 2,000 researchers, and more than
10 Tibetological periodicals in the Tibetan, Chinese and English languages. The first four
Tibetan- language volumes of the Tibetan epic King Gesar, the highest achievement of
ancient Tibetan culture, have been published. The College of Tibetan Medicine, the biggest
and most authoritative of its kind in China, has trained over 650 undergraduate students
and students of junior college level and 10 master's degree students.
Due to the influence of natural, historical and other factors, the western region, where
ethnic minorities are concentrated, lags far behind the south eastern seaboard region
economically -- a fact which, to a large extent, restricts the improvement of the
conditions for the subsistence and development of the minority peoples. To solve this
problem once and for all, the Chinese government began in 2000 to implement a strategy for
the all-out development of the west, at the same time intensifying its assistance to the
minority regions in policy-related matters, funds and personnel. This will forcefully
promote economic and social development in these regions, and the full realization of the
equal rights of ethnic minorities.