From: yjhbhc@dante.lbl.gov (Joe Huang)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: WHAT ABOUT TIBET?
Date: 28 Aug 1992 07:02:27 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Reply-To: yjhbhc@dante.lbl.gov (Joe Huang)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.106

The topic of Tibet seems to pop up on scc every six months or so,
with very similar charges and countercharges.  Of all the sources,
Chinese or Western, cited over the years, only Melvyn Goldstein
as so far not been branded either a CCP stooge, a British spy,
or a Lamaist separatist :-) :

In article <78559@ut-emx.uucp> joe@astro.as.utexas.edu (Joe Wang) writes:

>What you found seems to correspond to the situation Goldstein
>describes....

>According to Goldstein, in the cities (especially Lhasa), things are
>radically different....

Joe Wang's repeated references to Goldstein finally prompted me 
to post the following excerpts that I had saved months ago from 
a recent Goldstein book, _Nomads of Western Tibet: The Survival 
of a Way of Life_, Melvyn C. Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall, 
Univ. of California Press 1990. 

The following excerpts deal only with historical and political
aspects up to the Cultural Revolution.  Other parts of the book
describe the abandonment of the commune system and the partial
rebirth of the traditional lifestyle since the 1980's, their
current lifestyle, social attitudes, and religious beliefs.  
The book includes many pictures of the desolate but beautiful 
Tibetan landscape and the daily activities of these Tibetan nomads. 

Goldstein, who first started studying Tibetan language  and
culture in 1960 spent 16 months in Tibet between June 1986 
and June 1988, along with anthropologist Beall, at the invitation 
of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences (TASS) of the People's
Republic of China. Goldstein had previously spent two years 
(1974-1976) with ethnic Tibetans in a remote part of northwest 
Nepal just across the border from West Tibet, and is the author 
of a Tibetan-English dictionary, two textbooks on Tibetan, and 
a history entitled "The Demise of the Lamaist State (1910-1951)". 

For 10 month, Goldstein and Beall lived with a community of
265 nomads in the highlands of Changtang, days from any town
or paved road. This book describes the lifestyle of these
nomads, with some description of recent events in Tibet as
recorded from the nomads. 

The community that the Goldstein and Beall stayed at, Pala,
was part of a large politica entity (estate/fief) that belonged to 
the Panchen Lama. At the urging of the Panchen Lama, the Pala 
nomads were not involved in the 1959 Revolt and at one point asked 
the PLA to defend them from neighboring nomads who did rise up 
in armed revolt. Despite this, Goldstein records the travail 
experienced by the nomads of Pala between 1959 and the early 1980's.
The following are excerpts from Goldstein's book.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (p. 50)

     The history of Chinese-Tibetan relations is complex, each coun-
try's position differing depending on what period over the past 1,200
years is under discussion. Matters are further complicated because
these relations were never governed by formal treaties or agreements
that spelled out the rights and obligations of each side. Not surpris-
ingly, when the status of Tibet became a major international issue
after the fall of the Manchu (Ch'ing) Dynasty in China in 1911, both
sides expressed diametrically opposite views of the past. Whereas the
new leaders of Republican and Nationalist China insisted that Tibet
was an integral part of China, the Tibetans argued that their relation-
ship with China had been that of "priest" and "patron," the Manchu 
Emperors of China being lay patrons of the Dalai Lamas and Tibet, 
and that Tibet had always operated under its own rulers, officials,
language and laws. This is not the forum to explore the merits of 
these claims and counterclaims, and it will suffice to say that 
while Tibet was loosely subordinate to China for several hundred 
years prior to 1911, between then and 1951, it functioned as a 
_de facto_ independent political entity, although it never received 
_de jure_ international recognition of an independent legal status 
separate from China.
      The Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek never agreed to 
this de facto independent status for Tibet, and throughout the 
1911-51 period sought to assert various forms of Chinese control 
over it. But China was weak and did not succeed until the Chinese 
communists of Mao Zedung came to power in October 1949. A brief 
invasion of Eastern Tibet in October 1950 encircled and captured 
a large Tibetan defending force of about 10,000, together with one 
of Tibet's four Cabinet Ministers who was serving there as 
Governor-General. With Tibet's best force destroyed and the
road to Lhasa virtually open, the new People's Republic of China
quickly succeeded in compelling a reluctant Tibetan government to
accept a "17 Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet."
This Agreement left the old politico-economic system (including the
Dalai Lama) intact in exchange for Tibet's formal acknowledgement
of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. The terms of this arrangement con-
tinued more or less in effect until 1959 when the Dalai Lama feared
that the autonomy guaranteed in the 17 Point Agreement could not be
maintained and fled into exile in India together with about 100,000 of
his followers. From then on, China assumed complete and direct
control. 

NOMADS, LORDS AND ESTATES IN THE TRADITIONAL SOCIETY (p. 52 - 55)

We spent numerous hours sipping butter-tea in smoky tents talking
to elderly nomads about the "old society" as they now refer to the
traditional period before 1959. Trinley, the 63-year-old nomad
mentioned earlier, was one of our best sources for this topic.

    In the old society, we nomads of Pala were part of a large polit-
    ical entity (estate/fief) called Lagyab lhojang that consisted of
    10 contiguous nomad groups belonging to (His Holiness) the
    Panchen Lama. The Panchen Lama owned all the pasture areas
    here and appointed officials from among us (the nomads) to
    oversee conflicts and collect taxes. He was our lord, although
    he never came here himself. I have never seen him... but we
    were under his rule.
     
     The nomads of Pala, therefore, were the subjects of a religious 
lord, the Panchen Lama, to whom they paid taxes and provided corvee 
labor services. Their lord appointed the top officials in the area 
who, in turn, were responsible for maintaining law and order. Disputes 
that could not be settled on the local level were taken to the lord 
and his higher officials and, in theory, could ultimately be brought 
to the central government (headed by the Dalai Lama) if the lord could 
not satisfactorily adjudicate them.
     The nomad families in Lagyab Ihojang owned their herds, managing
and disposing of them as they wished. But they were not free to leave 
the estate and move with their livestock to the estate of another 
lord, even if that lord welcomed them. They were hereditarily bound to 
Pala (_Lagyab Ilojang_) and to their lord. If a situation arose where 
a family felt compelled to take its livestock and flee to a new lord 
(for example, due to a dispute with the lord's officials), the 
receiving lord would normally have to negotiate a payment to the 
original lord to compensate for the loss.
     The feudal-like "estate" system present in Lagyab Ihojang 
paralleled that found in Tibet's agricultural areas, both existing to 
ensure that religious and aristocratic elites (and the government 
itself) had a secure labor force to exploit the land they controlled. 
In essence, all land ultimately belonged to the central government in 
Lhasa, but over the centuries, segments of it had been granted to 
aristocratic families, great incarnate lamas, and monasteries for 
their upkeep and support. Since land alone, be it agricultural farm 
land or pastoral grassland, was not a means of support without the 
presence of laborers to work it, the Tibetan system made things
easy for lords by attaching laborers to these land grants, in essence 
granting the lord an estate or fief much like the manorial estates 
of medieval Europe, Tsarist Russia, and feudal Japan.
     Being "bound" to the estate of a lord, however, did not mean that 
one could never leave one's village or encampment. So long as the 
obligations to one's lord were fulfilled, and families could hire 
others to accomplish this, members of the household were free to go 
where they liked, including visits, trading trips, or pilgrimages. 
Lords were interested in maintaining the flow of goods from their 
estates, not in micro-managing the daily lives of their subjects.
     To be a subject ("serf"), moreover, did not imply poverty. Many 
of the Panchen Lama's subjects in _Lagyab Ihojang_ were wealthy, some 
owning very large herds of several thousand sheep and goats and many 
hundred yaks.  Given this, it is not surprising to find that 
traditional nomad society contained important class distinctions. A 
stratum of poor nomads, for example, worked as full-time servants and 
hired laborers for wealthy nomads, even though both were subjects of 
the Panchen Lama.
     The subjects of lords had rights as well as obligations, and so 
long as they fulfilled their obligations to the Panchen Lama, he 
could neither evict them nor refuse them access to his pastures. 
And although this was clearly no democracy, and could be oppressive 
when a lord and his officials were greedy, corrupt, and arrogant, 
generally the system was lax and the lord did not intrude into the 
nomads' daily lives.  Beneath the lord, the key institution in 
_Lagyab Ilojang_ was the family. 
     Members of a family shared a tent, cooked and ate together, and 
jointly managed their herd, decisions being made by the family head. 
Sharing and cooperation within the family contrasted with a norm of 
fierce independence between families. The ideal for nomad familes was 
to be self-contained units, and they preferred to hire individuals 
from the class of poor and indigent nomads rather than negotiating 
with neighbors to share tasks such as herding.
     Authority in the family was (and is) generally exercised by 
parents.  Respect for parents is strong, and Tibetan ideals hold that 
one should show gratitude to one's parents and obey their wishes; 
parents also normally control their family's activities, for example, 
where to pasture on a given day, which livestock to sell or slaughter, 
and even when and whom to marry. 

CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND PASTORAL COMMUNES, 1966-81 (p. 140-144)

The emergence of the the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"
in eastern China in late 1966 set in motion forces that engulfed the
nomads in a decade of pain and suffering and almost destroyed
their way of life. The Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards
reached Lhasa almost immediately, immersing the more accessible
regions of Tibet in a reign of terror and chaos. In more remote areas
like Pala, the full force of the Cultural Revolution only arrived in
1968-70. Political "struggle sessions" and class conflict began in
earnest, private religion was banned, and word reached the nomads
that private ownership of livestock was to be replaced by people's
communes.
     Coming on top of their loss of religious freedom, the news that
they would lose their livestock and freedom to work and trade as
they saw fit was more than they could bear. They (and the nomads
in the areas around them) rebelled. The overwhelming majority of
Pala nomads adopted the name of one of Tibet's two Red Guard
groups (Gyenlo or "revolutionaries"), and interpreted the intent of
Mao's call to "pull down those in authority" to mean expelling the
local government officials and reinstituting complete religious and
economic freedom under their own leadership. Since the army in
China had declared itself neutral in the struggle between the
competing Red Guard groups, the nomads mistakenly believed
it would also remain neutral in their struggle for religious and
economic freedom. The Pala rebels arrested the few Pala nomads
who supported the pro-communist-party Red Guard group
(Nyamdre or "alliance"), captured and executed two district-level
Tibetan officials who had been especially cruel in implementing
"class struggle," and drove out the rest, taking control of their
area for three months during the summer of 1969.
     Their success was short-lived. Guided by loyal Tibetan cadre,
the People's Liberation Army, as in 1959, once again came to Pala,
but this time to attack rather than support the nomads. Armed
almost solely with matchlock rifles and swords, the nomads'
rebellion disintegrated immediately. The rebel leaders were arrested
and punished and a commune system was instituted in Pala.
    At this time, the class background of each nomad family was
reexamined, and households were reclassified as "poor," "middle," or
"rich" based on factors such as the number of servants and hired hands
they had. The "rich" were designated as "exploiters" of the masses and
"class enemies," and overnight, their lives were turned topsy turvy.
    Wanam recalled for us the day in 1970 when the local Tibetan leaders
of the Cultural Revolution suddenly appeared before his tent and, 
without any prior warning, ordered him out and expropriated all his 
wealth.
     They called me a reactionary and a class enemy and told me that 
     from today on all my animals and goods were confiscated and I 
     must live under the "guidance" of the people just as the poorest 
     of the poor lived in the old society. We had about 1,200 sheep 
     and goats and 100 yak at this time. Right then and there they 
     ripped off my earring, rings, necklace, and took my silverflint-
     striker and bullet holder. They also confiscated my new sheepskin 
     robe saying that it was too good for the likes of a class enemy 
     like me. In its place they gave me an old, worn one. But this was 
     not all. They also took all of my family's household possessions 
     and food stores, leaving us only one pot, one bag of 55 pounds 
     of barley grain per person, and a little tsamba. And then they
     took away our fine yak-hair tent giving us in its place an old,
     tattered canvas tent. We were stunned. Our whole life's wealth 
     was eliminated in a matter of minutes. We didn't know how we would 
     survive since they also said that we could not join the people's 
     commune but had to fend for ourselves, alone and without help.  
     Our sole means of support were the 40 goats they left us (eight 
     goats per person), only 10 of which were milk goats.  

Another former class enemy told us: 

     They forced me to stand before "the people" bent over at the 
     waist, eyes looking at the ground, for hours while individuals 
     yelled and screamed at me for exploiting them. Yanchen (a female 
     official) even jumped and sat on my back like I was a horse while 
     berating me for my crimes. But I never understood any of this. 
     I hadn't mistreated anyone. I was rich and had lots of animals, 
     but that was due to my own capabilities, so how could that be 
     a crime. It was very difficult.
         At first I didn't want to admit my crimes but it was futile 
     and I soon decided my only hope for survival was to play along 
     and admit to everything while demonstrating my change of heart. 
     Two years after the commune began they allowed me join it. 
     Before that I could barely survive on the few goats they left 
     with me. I hunted a lot but with no gun I had to climb above 
     the cornered animals and kill them by throwing down rocks. 
     Occasionally, Igot some private work from commune members such 
     as tanning skins, but we were always on the verge of starvation. 
     After we were in the commune life was still hard but at least 
     the fear of starvation was not ever-present.  

     Some nomads scrambled to change or avoid a "bad-class" label by
denouncing spouses or parents. Trinley, for example, was a poor man who
had married the only daughter of a wealthy nomad and became a part of
her household. Since he was not in the "wealthy" class by birth, he 
and his son caved in to the suggestions of officials that they now 
show their true class origins by divorcing (and denouncing) the 
wife/mother. Trinley did so and was made a commune leader as a reward. 
His former wife ultimately died alone from what appears to be a 
combination of disease, malnutrition, and despair. Trinley nowadays 
is so ridden with guilt that he is only partially functional.
     Nomad communes were relatively simple to implement despite the
seeming incongruity of the concepts of "commune" and "nomads." The
subsistence technology (milking, churning, herding, moving, and so 
forth) remained identical, but the nomads were transformed from 
private owners of animals to holders of a share in the commune's 
property, or as one nomad more bluntly put it, "We were nothing more 
than servants of the commune. The commune took all our animals and 
productive implements such as pails and churns, and we had to do 
whatever work they told us."
    The old pattern of winter trading trips to obtain grain continued, 
but now transactions were between nomad communes and farming communes
rather than economically independent families.
     When we asked the nomads whether the commune paid them for
their animals and equipment, one man explained, "The 'class enemies'
of course got nothing. For the rest of us, after taking all the animals 
and wealth, they assigned monetary values to each item in order to 
calculate the total worth of the commune. This figure, divided by the 
number of 'members,' established the monetary value of a single 
person's share. If the animals and equipment you 'gave' were worth 
more than this amount, you got some money back. I was classified as 
a "middle-class" nomad because I had had 200 sheep and 20 yak, and I 
actually got back 500 yuan at this time.  But I lost all my freedom."
     Unlike the traditional period when each family performed all the
necessary productive activities, during the commune era individuals 
often specialized in only one or two activities such as herding yak 
or milking.  All the pastoral tasks such as milking, shearing wool, 
and so forth were assigned a work-point value from one to 10, for 
example, milking received 10 points whereas spinning wool thread 
only three and yak herding five.  Work "points" were awarded each day 
depending on the nature and amount of each person's work. and once 
each month, the commune secretary rode to each encampment to record 
in a master ledger the daily activities (and points) of each nomad 
over the previous 30 days. Each nomad was given a small booklet in 
which he or she could record daily work; illiterates without friends 
to help had to memorize their work record until the secretary arrived.
     Each year, the commune's total production less its taxes to the
government was converted to a monetary figure and divided by the total
number of work points accrued during the year. This yielded a cash value
for each work point. Each nomad then obtained an equal, but minimal
amount of food and other products. This was usually just a bare
subsistence level. The value of this amount was then subtracted from the
household's total work points. If a household had leftover work points
after this, it received additional goods and/or cash, but if it were 
short work points, it had to repay the commune or go into debt to it.
      Some households with many able workers did reasonably well
under the commune's system of payment, but the quality of life for the
overwhelming majority of nomads deteriorated markedly in comparison
with the previous decade and the traditional society. This was 
partially the result of the high taxes and forced quota sales and 
partly because the nomads did not care for the commune's livestock as 
carefully as their own. But it was also because officials interested 
in enhancing their own reputations falsely claimed increases in 
production. Paying the accompanying increase in the total taxes 
required a greater percentage of real production and left less to be 
divided.
      Work was constant, seven days a week, with massive "public
works" projects such as fencing off pastures with stone walls undertaken
when there was no real work. People had no control over their lives. 
They were powerless and felt like slaves, ordered here and there by 
their new masters. One nomad who had been poor in the old society 
poignantly expressed the general feeling, "At least before the commune 
if you were hungry you could always find work as a herder or servant, 
or outright beg for food, but during the commune, you just stayed 
hungry."
      However, no attempt was made to diminish the geographic scope of
pastoralism during the commune period either by expropriating nomad
pastureland, resettling nomads in agricultural areas, or resettling 
Tibetan or Chinese (Han) farmers in nomad areas. Full-scale pastoralism,
therefore, continued during the Cultural Revolution. On the other hand,
the traditional culture came under severe attack.
   The nomads' hatred of this system derives not just from the economic
hardships they endured. As much or more they hated the class struggle
sessions and the complete destruction of all remnants of Buddhism in 
their society. The policy known as "destroying the four olds" (old 
ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits) was energetically 
implemented with the aim of eliminating the traditional culture and 
creating in its place a new homogeneous and atheistic communist 
culture. Private religious activities were forbidden, religious 
buildings including monasteries and prayer walls were torn down, and 
the nomads were forced to abandon the deeply held values and customs 
that were the essence of their cultural identity. For example, men 
were required to cut their distinctive hair-style of bangs and
two braids, and women were required to break the strong taboo against
females slaughtering animals. This was a terrible period since the 
nomads' values, norms and morals were deliberately turned upside down 
and, furthermore, food was often inadequate. The propaganda and class
struggle sessions conducted by Tibetan cadre contradicted and ridiculed
everything the nomads understood and felt, creating feelings of anxiety,
guilt, worthlessness, and low self-esteem. In a sense, the government
attempted to reduce Tibetan ethnic identity to language alone; all the 
rest of their rich culture, their values and customs, was rejected as 
superstition, deceit, and exploitation. Chinese policy during this 
period sought to maintain pastoral production but destroy the social 
and cultural fabric of the nomads' traditional way of life. From the 
nomads' point of view, they had become an exploited subject class 
treated far worse than they had been under the "serfdom" of the old 
society. None of them believed they would ever again see a day when 
they would be allowed to follow their traditional way of life again,
the "old society" appeared dead!      
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