“Radical Emancipation of the Mind”
Mount Qomolangma, known as Mount Everest in the West, attracts some 60,000 tourists each year, providing plentiful opportunity for local farmers and herders to improve their livelihood. At an altitude of more than 5,000 meters, the Qomolangma base camp in Tashi Dzom Township, Xigaze’s Tingri County offers services such as tents, camp carts, yaks and workers for transporting supplies, as well as tour guides. In August 2016, Yang Tao, a scholar from CTRC, spent a week conducting a survey there. He found that due to limitations of capital thresholds and yak numbers, it was hard for poor locals to benefit from tourism development, so Yang suggested optimization of the tourist revenue sharing mechanism of the base camp.
Income distribution is an inevitable topic in all sorts of economic theories. Six decades ago, it would have been unimaginable to form a revenue sharing mechanism involving the government, investors, farmers and herders in Tibet, let alone institutional optimization that aims to benefit more poverty-stricken farmers and herders.
Recently, four Tibetological researchers from Ctrc—tsering Yangdzom, Wande Khar, Li Jian and Yang Tao—were interviewed by China Pictorial. The researchers agreed that the democratic reform that started six decades ago has been the most profound and radical social reform in the history of Tibet and laid the groundwork for the modernization of Tibet’s social system.
Originating in the 13th century, the feudal serfdom system enforced a strict hierarchical structure in Tibet. Lords accounted for less than five percent of Tibet’s population and maintained ownership of the vast majority of production means, while serfs and slaves who accounted for more than 95 percent of the total population lacked production means and personal freedom. In his book Old Tibetfaces Newchina, French Tibetologist Alexander David-neel wrote, “All the farmers in Tibet are serfs saddled with lifelong debt, and it is almost impossible to find any who have paid off their debts.”
In Yang Tao’s eyes, the most prominent characteristic of Tibet’s development is institutional reform creating a strong driving force. “Democratic reform enabled Tibet to shift from a feudal serfdom system to a socialist system, not only bringing radical changes to productivity and production relations, but also giving ordinary farmers land and livestock and considerably boosting their enthusiasm for agricultural production.”
Wande Khar believes that the democratic reform eliminated the feudal personal independence relationship that had existed in Tibet for centuries and enabled serfs to become independent persons, which is the most important cornerstone for Tibet becoming a modern society.
Tsering Yangdzom grew up in Lhasa. Thanks to substantial improvement of educational facilities after the peaceful liberation of Tibet, she had access to quality education from primary school to college. She once worked as a teacher at Tibet University. In 1988, she joined CTRC and became Khar’s colleague. Yangdzom has paid great attention to the disruptive influence of Tibet’s democratic reform on people’s minds. “Today, as we plainly describe the effort to ‘overthrow the system of feudal serfdom’ in Tibet, most don’t realize the people underwent a radical emancipation of the mind.”