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????As the backward
social system in the minority areas hindered the development
of productive forces, reform of the social system, long
cherished by the minority people, was the key to achieving
prosperity.
In places where minority people had
the same or similar social economic structures as those
in the Han areas, the people's government generally
used more or less the same methods to accomplish land
reform from 1950 to 1954, putting an end to land ownership
by feudal landlords which had lasted for several thousand
years.
In the areas of the Tibetan, Dai and
Yi people, still living under a slave system and feudal
serfdom, positive but careful measures were taken by
the state. A policy of redemption was employed towards
some upper-strata elements. Reforms were carried out
through consultation between the laboring people and
the upper-strata elements. All forms of exploitation
and privileges formerly enjoyed by the slave-owners
and feudal serf-owners were abolished, with their land
distributed to the land-poor and landless masses. All
serfs and slaves were emancipated and given personal
freedom and the right to live in political equality.
Slave-owners and feudal serf-owners who accepted reforms,
when their land was confiscated and their extra animals
and farm implements requisitioned, were allotted a share
of the land. Law-abiding and cooperative former slave-owners
and serf-owners were even given certain political rights
and the right to vote.
What was not to be ignored, however,
was the attitude of the upper-strata elements toward
the reforms. In the Dai and Hani areas peaceful reforms
were carried out through consultation with the upper-strata
elements who accepted the country's policy, ending the
serf system. But in Tibet, where entrenched feudalism
resisted any political reform, an armed rebellion was
staged in March 1959 by forces loyal to the Dalai Lama,
Tibet's traditional spiritual leader. Troops of the
People's Liberation Army quelled the insurrection. After
Dalai Lama and his followers fled the country, land
reform and the complete abolition of serfdom and exploitation
were carried out.
In the pastoral areas a more relaxed
attitude was adopted in carrying out social reform.
A policy of rehabilitation was employed towards all
herd-owners. Because pastural economy was so much at
the mercy of weather and livestock breeding could easily
be sabotaged, no heated struggle took place, nor was
the confiscation or redistribution of their herds allowed.
What was ended was the system of feudal privileges surrounding
herdowners and chieftains; pasture was placed under
public ownership; free grazing was extended to major
herdowners and poor herdsmen alike. Government aid was
given to the poor herdsmen to compensate for their former
suffering.
In the course of social transformation,
the herdsmen were relied upon to convert all who could
be converted, and with a focus on the protection and
development of livestock, pastoral mutual-aid teams
and co-operatives were formed; herdowners were allowed
to join state-private pastures and state pastoral farms.
In the areas of the Jingpo, Lisu, Drung,
Nu, Blang, Va, Jino, Oroqen and Ewenki ethnic groups,
and some Li communities retaining vestiges of primitive
communalism, no democratic reforms were carried out
systematically. But efforts were made by the central
government to help in the development of production,
culture, mutual-aid teams and cooperatives; changes
were made in obsolete practices and backward systems
that hindered economic development.
In line with China's policy on religious
freedom and protecting religious relics and people's
religious activities, positive but careful guidelines
were worked out to distinguish religious beliefs from
practices of oppression and exploitation. It was necessary
to separate legitimate ecclesiastical practices from
the feudal punishment system that allowed high clerical
leaders to oppress the monks under their control. Active
counter-revolutionaries had to be separated from those
who simply clung to reactionary ideas, and it was deemed
necessary to find those religious leaders who had incurred
the real hatred of the guiltless masses. But it was
also necessary to maintain a policy of non-interference
in the normal religious activities of professional clerics.
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