This song is also known as “Happy Liberation of Helot”.
For millennia, Tibet was a feudal serf society ruled by a theocratic dictatorship under the Dalai Lama and the clerical elite. In April 1951, the Tibetan local delegation headed by Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme arrived in Beijing to negotiate the liberation of Tibet. On 23 May, the Central People’s Government and the Tibetan local government signed the the “Seventeen Point Agreement”, proclaiming the peaceful liberation of Tibet and thwarting the imperialist attempts to obstruct its negotiations. In 1955, the Preparatory Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region was established. At the same time, the broad masses of people proposed democratic reforms in Tibet.
Nevertheless, the feudal theocracy prevailed. Article 4 of the Seventeen Point Agreement stipulates: “The central authorities will not alter the existing political system in Tibet. The central authorities also will not alter the established status, functions and powers of the Dalai Lama. Officials of various ranks shall continue to hold office.” Article 11 provides: “In matters relating to various reforms in Tibet, there will be no compulsion on the part of the central authorities. The local government of Tibet shall carry out reforms of its own accord, and, when the people raise demands for reform, they shall be settled by means of consultation with the leading personnel of Tibet.”
Prior to 1959, Tibetan feudal society was darker and crueller than its European contemporaries. The Thirteen-Article and Sixteen-Article Codes legally segregated people into three classes and nine levels. Officials, nobles, and upper-class monks and serf-owners, who accounted for less than 5% of the population, held the entirety arable land, pastures, forests, mountains, and livestock. Serfs, accounting for over 90% of the population, could be disposed of as private property. Serf-owners can also set up private prisons in their estates and exacted cruel penalties, such as the gouging of eyes, cutting of ears, breaking of hands, maiming of legs and water torture.
Serf-owners also exploited serfs through servitude and usury. The local government collected more than 200 types of levies. Serfs were expected to perform corvée-usually accounting for 50% of productivity, even reaching 70% to 80% for some serfs. Serfs had often no choice but to borrow at exorbitant interest rates, sometimes 20% to 30%, creating obligations that transcended generations. According to a Tibetan proverb, “the serfs have three knives plunged in their bodies-the corvée, rent, and interest-and have only three paths to take-to flee famine, to sell oneself into servitude or to beg.“
In pre-reform Tibet, the struggle between the patriotic, anti-imperialist forces and the comprador, pro-imperialist forces, was intertwined with that between the serfs and the serf-owning class. The former represented the progressive advancement of the productive forces against conservative reaction.
Although Mao Zedong had written in 1956 to the Dalai Lama that he was not prepared to carry out democratic reforms in Tibet immediately, the latter, with the clerical and aristocratic elite, launched an armed uprising in March 1959 to tear up the Seventeen Point Agreement. However, it was quickly quelled by the People’s Liberation Army with the support of the Tibetan serfs. The Dalai Lama himself fled and established a government-in-exile in India.
On 28 March 1959, the Tibet Autonomous Region Preparatory Committee assumed the powers of the local government and formally abolished the feudal theocracy, emancipating millions of serfs. Serfs not only gained personal liberties, they redistributed land and enjoyed political rights stipulated by the law. The property of nobles who participated in the unrest was totally confiscated and redistributed. As for the nobles who had not participated in the unrest, a redemption policy was adopted: The state subsidised the discounted purchase for redistribution to the poor farmers and herdsmen free of charge.
Because these policies and measures addressed material conditions, they were welcomed by people from all walks of life, first of all the poor serfs and slaves, and later the upper classes. By the end of 1960, Tibet had basically completed the land reform, and mass organisations under the leadership of the Communist Party were established in across the region, cementing its legacy.
The democratic reform movement is the deepest and most extensive social change in Tibet’s history. Serfs, treated as “talking livestock” for millennia, became “people” in the true sense for the first time. On 19 January 2009, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region People’s Government, Legqog, announced, in Tibetan and Mandarin, the delegation of 28 March as the “Serfs Emancipation Day” in celebration of 50 years since the reforms.
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