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.
|