Full text: Democratic Reform in Tibet -- Sixty Years On

By:Xinhua
update:March 28,2019

– People’s governments were established at various levels for the people to exercise their rights.
On March 28, 1959, the State Council announced that the government of Tibet was dissolved. The Qamdo People’s Liberation Committee and the Panchen Kampus Assembly were also abolished, thus ending the coexistence of political powers of different nature. Under the leadership of the Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region, people’s governments were gradually set up at various levels. In mid-July, 1959, the first township-level peasants’ association, known as the Peasants’ Association of Khesum Village, and the first county-level peasants’ association, known as the Peasants’ Association of Nedong County, were established. Former serfs were elected as chairs or members of the associations, leading the people to conduct democratic reform. By the end of 1960, Tibet had established 1,009 organs of state power at township level, 283 at district level, 78 at county level and eight at prefecture (city) level. The number of officials from Tibetan and other minority ethnic groups totaled over 10,000. More than 4,400 liberated serfs became officials at community level. In the second half of 1961, a general election was held all over Tibet. For the first time, the former serfs were no longer regarded as “speaking tools”, and emerged on the political stage as the masters of the new Tibet.

Now enjoying the broadest possible democratic rights endowed by the Constitution and other laws that they had never had in the pre-liberation society, former serfs engaged in elections with great enthusiasm, and elected organs and governments at various levels. For the first time in the history of Tibet, local governments at various levels were elected in a democratic way through people’s exercise of their right to vote and to stand for election. By July 1965, general elections had been basically completed. Among the 2,600-plus deputies elected to the people’s congresses, 2,200 were former impoverished serfs. In Gyantse County, voters called their electoral certificates “masters’ certificates”. They saw elections as joyous events and actively participated in the elections of deputies to the people’s congresses.

On August 25, 1965, the bill to establish the Tibet Autonomous Region, tabled by the State Council, was approved at the 15th Session of the Standing Committee of the Third National People’s Congress. From September 1 to 9, 1965, the First Session of the First People’s Congress of Tibet was held. At this session, the Tibet Autonomous Region was established, and the People’s Committee of the autonomous region came into being by election. Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme was elected chairman of the Committee. A large number of liberated serfs held leading posts in organs of political power at various levels of the Region. The establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region and the organs of self-government of the Region realized the historic leap from theocratic feudal serfdom to people’s democratic socialism, and signified that Tibet had set up a people’s democratic government and begun to exercise thorough-going regional ethnic autonomy. In 1979, the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region was elected at the Second Session of the Third People’s Congress of the Region.

According to the Constitution and the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy of the People’s Republic of China, people of all ethnic groups in Tibet fully enjoy the right to vote and to stand for election. Since 1978, Tibet has held 11 elections of deputies to the people’s congresses at township level, 10 at county level, and eight at the level of municipalities having subordinate districts. The people in Tibet can directly elect, in accordance with the law, deputies to the people’s congresses at county (district) and township (town) levels, and these elected deputies will then elect deputies to the people’s congresses at the autonomous regional and national levels. Through the people’s congresses at various levels, the people of Tibet exercise their right to participation in the administration of state and local affairs.

Currently, there are 35,963 deputies to the people’s congresses at all levels in Tibet. Among them, deputies from the Tibetan and other minority ethnic groups account for 92.18 percent. Upholding the organic unity of Party leadership, the running of the country by the people, and law-based governance, the People’s Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region and its Standing Committee guarantee and develop the rights of the people of all ethnic groups to be their own masters through legislative and institutional channels, ensure that the people of all ethnic groups enjoy broad rights and freedom, and expand citizens’ orderly political participation. They provide support for the deputies to the people’s congresses to perform their duties in accordance with the law. Maintaining close ties with the deputies and the people, they take responsibility for the people and accept their oversight. They work to safeguard the fundamental interests of the people of all ethnic groups in Tibet and promote well-rounded human development.

Since the establishment of the autonomous region in 1965, the People’s Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region and its Standing Committee have enacted or approved more than 300 local regulations, resolutions, and decisions of a regulatory nature. In so doing, they have fulfilled the rights of autonomy of the localities enjoying regional ethnic autonomy. Now, work in various respects in Tibet has been law-based, and great

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