Tibetan farmers and herdsmen were better-off on the whole in 2007 and, by 2010, their average income is expected to reach the medium level among their peers in other provinces and autonomous region across China. Then, how the Party and government has enabled them to rid themselves of poverty in less than half a century on the basis of abject poverty in old Tibet and how they have been benefited continuously in the course of economic and social development in the region?
Reporters from People's Daily, a leading newspaper in China, recently had an interview with Wang Jian, deputy director the Tibetan Autonomous Region's Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation on these questions.
In old Tibet, Buddhist monks and aristocrats enforced the feudal serfdom of integrating politics with religion, in which the serf-owners who barely made up 5 percent of the total Tibetan population but owned all the production materials and most of subsistence means, whereas the serfs, who constituted some 95 percent of the Tibetan population, were at the bottom of the social ladder, toiling all their lives for serfs owners but living in hunger, diseases and terror. The average lifespan for Tibetans in 1951 was only 35.5 years and a maternal mortality rate reached as high as 5,000 per 100,000.
Some one million former serfs have become masters of their own destiny with the democratic reform carried out in 1959. Tibetan farmers and herders have improved their production and living conditions owing to all preferential policies the state granted them afterwards. Their average lifespan increased to 67 years in 2007 with a maternal mortality rate of 247.49 per 100,000. And the Tibet region is expected to achieve a national medium goal in term of per-capita net income by 2010.
In early years of the peaceful liberation, the Party and government prioritized the issue of resolving abject poverty left over by Old Tibet. Farmers and herdsmen got organized for the large-scale farmland improvement and water conservancy projects in the 70s of the 20th century. The "relief-type" poverty alleviation was launched in the 1980s and the "Eight-Seven" plan for poverty alleviation and elimination nationwide was implemented in the 1990s in Tibet, as elsewhere in China. By the year 2000, the people in the entire region had been basically able to feed and clothe themselves with its needy population reducing to 70,000 from the 480,000 due to special care in the past.
Moreover, Wang Jian noted, 59 percent of the Tibetan farmers and herders have moved into their safe, comfortable new homes since 2006, and their net average income reached 2,788 yuan (about 400 US dollars) last year.
The reason for Tibet to attain the medium range goal in less than half a century in term of average net income for farmers and herders is inseparable from special care of the central government and an immense support given by the people nationwide as it has received a huge aid from state common accumulations but without involving itself in the primitive accumulation for the country's national industrialization, Wang explained.
On the policy on Tibet poverty alleviation, Wang acknowledged that it has six salient features: First, high standards with a big scope of alleviation. The autonomous region has since 2006 subjected all farmers and herders each with a net income of less than 1,700 yuan a year as targets of aid or help.
Second, there is a sustainable increase in the amount of helping funds. Take the first seven years of the new century, the annual input for the Tibet autonomous region had risen from 172.45 million yuan in 2001 to 308 million yuan in 2007 with an annual increase range of over 13 percent.
Third, payment transference by the state and key national projects join forces. In 2007, 20 billion yuan of Tibetan budget was covered with payment transference by the central government and, during the "11th national development program (2006-2010), it supports Tibet with 180 major construction protects with a combined investment of 77 billion yuan.
Fourth, the state has formulated special privileged financial policies toward Tibet since 1994, and any of those designated and entitled to the aid can apply the poverty alleviation loan with a yearly interest of only 1.08 percent.
Fifth, A minimum subsistence guarantee system was introduced in 2007 to include all farmers and herders with a yearly income of less than 800 yuan, and the standard of subsistence guarantee was raised further to a fee of 850 yuan in 2008 and, finally, the state policies of supporting and benefiting farmers and for compensation have also helped improve the production and livelihoods of local farmers and herdsmen.
By People's Daily Online
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