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Serfdom in Tibet controversy


The serfdom in Tibet controversy rests on both a political and an academic debate. In the political debate, Chinese sources claim moral authority for governing Tibet, based on narratives that portray Tibet as a "feudal serfdom" and a "hell on earth" prior to the invasion of Tibet in 1950.Tibetologists have presented a range of opinions as to the accuracy of this characterization, and there continues to be a lack of consensus on the topic. Accusations of the existence of a variety of unfree labour have been a recurrent theme, covering periods both before and after the Chinese takeover. Supporters of the Chinese position highlight statements by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) that, prior to 1959, 95% of Tibetans lived in "feudal serfdom", and cite cases of abuse and cruelty in the traditional Tibetan system. Human rights organizations and supporters of the Free Tibet movement have highlighted reports of Communist-run forced labour camps in the region and point out the efforts made by the Tibetan authorities to modernise the country and improve conditions in Tibet in the first half of the 20th Century.

The nature of serfdom and its applicability to Eastern societies is contested amongst academics. Tibetologist Melvyn Goldstein wrote in 1971 that "Tibet was characterized by a form of institutionalized inequality that can be called pervasive serfdom". However many academics have questioned the applicability of the concept to Tibet, a recent example being Heidi Fjeld who in 2003 argued that feudalism and the use of the term "serf" was misleading in relation to the social system of Tibet and instead described it as "a caste-like social hierarchy".

The phrase "serfdom in Tibet" can be misleading since Tibet cannot simply be defined as one political entity or social system; its political and socioeconomic structures has varied greatly over time and between sub-districts. Although the central leadership in Lhasa had authority for various periods this did not imply the kind of political control of modern Western states. According to Luciano Petech, in the 18th Century CE "K'ams [Kham] was practically independent of Lhasa under its great lamas". Qinghai was not ruled by Lhasa. Later in the 1930s and 1940s, the Kuomintang Muslim warlord Ma Bufang ruled the Qinghai Province of the Republic of China (ROC). Even the definition of Tibet has been contested with a map of competing claims identifying six distinct types of Tibetan region claimed by various entities. In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) and in the ROC (1912-1949), the part of Tibet governed by Lhasa was limited to no larger than the modern Tibet Autonomous Region, and did not include Kham (Xikang Province of China, the western part i.e. Qamdo was occupied by Lhasa in the Tibet-Kham War which lasted from the 1910s to 1930s) and Qinghai (Qinghai Province of China). Generally, the government of the PRC also limits Tibet to the area it has designated the Tibet Autonomous Region, consisting of the traditional areas of Ü, Tsang, Ngari and Qamdo (i.e. the western Kham. In 1955 the NPC abolished Xikang Province, and legally incorporated Qamdo into Tibet)—whereas the Tibetan government in exile claims that other ethnically Tibetan areas to the east and to the north also belong to Tibet, i.e. "Greater Tibet". (These areas now respectively belong to Qinghai Province, Gansu Province, Sichuan Province and Yunnan Province of China.) Scholarship frequently represents a limited survey, restricted to the central region of Tibet, and may not accurately represent the whole of cultural Tibet or all Tibetan speaking peoples.


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