Foreword I II III IV V VI VII Conclusion
Foreword
China is a united multi-ethnic country. As a member of the big
family of the Chinese nation, the Tibetan people have created and developed their
brilliant and distinctive culture during a long history of continuous exchanges and
contacts with other ethnic groups, all of whom have assimilated and promoted each other's
cultures. Tibetan culture has all along been a dazzling pearl in the treasure-house of
Chinese culture as well as that of the world as a whole.
The gradual merger of the Tubo culture of the Yalong Valley in the middle part of the
basin of the Yarlung Zangbo River, and the ancient Shang-Shung culture of the western part
of the Qinghai- Tibet Plateau formed the native Tibetan culture. In the period of the
reign of Songtsen Gampo in the seventh century, Buddhism was introduced to the Tubo people
from the Central Plain of China, India and Nepal, and gradually developed into Tibetan
Buddhism with its distinctive characteristics. At the same time, the Indian and Nepalese
cultures of South Asia, the Persian and Arabic cultures of West Asia and especially the
Han Chinese culture of the Central Plain had considerable influence on the development of
Tibetan culture. In the long process of Tibetan cultural development, Tibetan architecture
art and the plastic arts such as sculpture, painting, decoration and handicrafts, as well
as music, dance, drama, spoken and written language, literature in written form, folk
literature, Tibetan medicine and pharmacology, astronomy and the calendar all reached very
high levels.
Tibet later became a local regime practicing a system of feudal serfdom under a
theocracy, and ruled by a few upper-class monks and nobles. This ensured that Tibetan
Buddhist culture gained the dominant position in Tibetan culture for a long period of
time, until the Democratic Reform was carried out in 1959. Throughout this period, a
handful of upper-class lamas and aristocrats monopolized the means of production, culture
and education.
Cultural and artistic pursuits were regarded as their exclusive amusements, while the
serfs and slaves, who constituted 95 percent of the Tibetan population, lived in extreme
poverty and were not guaranteed even the basic right of subsistence, let alone the right
to enjoy culture and education. The long reign of feudal serfdom under theocracy not only
severely fettered the growth of the productive forces in Tibet, but also resulted in a
hermetically sealed and moribund traditional Tibetan culture, including cultural relics,
historic sites and sites for Buddhist worship. As for modern science, technology, culture
and education, they did not get any chance to develop at all.
After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Central People's Government
attached great importance to the protection and development of the fine aspects of
traditional Tibetan culture. The "Seventeen-Article Agreement" on measures for
the peaceful liberation of Tibet signed by the Central People's Government and the local
government of Tibet in 1951 clearly stipulates: "In accordance with the actual
conditions of Tibet, the spoken and written Tibetan language and school education will be
progressively developed." In 1959, with the support of the Central Government, Tibet
carried out the Democratic Reform to abolish the feudal serf system and liberate the
million serfs and slaves, and implemented the ethnic regional autonomy system there step
by step. This marked the advent of a brand-new era in the social and cultural development
of Tibet, and ended the monopoly exercised over Tibetan culture by the few upper-class
feudal lamas and aristocrats, making it the common legacy for all the people of Tibet to
inherit and carry on.
In accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and the Law on Ethnic Regional
Autonomy, the Central People's Government and the People's Government of the Tibet
Autonomous Region have made great efforts in the past 40-plus years to promote the social
and economic development of Tibet, to satisfy the Tibetan people's increasing needs for
rich material and cultural lives. At the same time, they have devoted large amounts of
human, financial and material resources to protecting and carrying forward the fine
aspects of traditional Tibetan culture, as well as initiating and developing modern
science, culture and education by employing legal, economic and administrative means. As a
result, considerable achievements attracting worldwide attention have been attained. All
the people in Tibet, as masters of the new era, jointly carry on, develop and enjoy the
traditional Tibetan culture, and jointly create modern civilized life and culture,
bringing unprecedented prosperity and development to Tibetan culture.