First Voice

 

 

After fleeing abroad, the Dalai Lama and his followers have repeatedly defended the system of serfdom that existed in Xizang before the democratic reforms of 1959 and even glorified the lives of serfs and theocratic rule. They claimed that "Tibet never experienced famine in history, and beggars were extremely rare," that "Old Tibet was free and peaceful," and that it was "a pure and harmonious religious sanctuary." They have also portrayed monasteries as "disciplined educational centers and knowledge hubs, exemplifying the traditional Tibetan way of life," while depicting the Dalai Lama himself as a "peaceful religious leader forced into exile."

But do these claims align with historical facts? A wealth of historical evidence proves that the Dalai Lama's group has fabricated lies to deceive those with limited knowledge of the region. Historically, Xizang before 1959 was under a feudal theocratic serfdom system for centuries. This oppressive system persisted until the democratic reforms, during which over a million serfs lived under brutal exploitation and enslavement and endured extreme misery.  

The system of serfdom was a form of feudal oppression in which serfs had an extremely low social status. They were bound to the land, deprived of personal freedoms and entirely dependent on feudal lords or serf-owners, who controlled every aspect of their lives.

Serfdom, as a typical feudal system, emerged in medieval Europe and persisted in some countries until the mid-19th century. It harks back to the time of Roman slavery, and historians often refer to the era of rampant church domination and serfdom in medieval Europe as the "Dark Ages."

In the 19th century, movements to abolish slavery and serfdom swept across many countries and regions. Slavery was abolished in nations such as Britain, Russia and the United States. In 1861, the Russian emperor Alexander II officially issued the Emancipation Manifesto to abolish serfdom. In 1862, the then American President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and in 1865, the U.S. Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, formally outlawing slavery. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, declared that "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."  

Historical facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that the Dalai Lama was not only a religious leader but also the supreme ruler and primary beneficiary of the feudal serfdom system in Xizang. The true purpose of his escape was to protect the theocratic serfdom system and safeguard the interests of the feudal aristocracy. The Dalai Lama's group represented the ruling elite of serf-owners rather than the oppressed serfs.  

Xizang society before 1959 was rigidly hierarchical. The 13-Article Code and the 16-Article Code, which had been enforced in the region for centuries, explicitly divided people into three main classes and nine sub-levels, stating: "People are classified into upper, middle and lower ranks, with each rank further divided into upper, middle and lower subcategories. These distinctions are determined by bloodline and social position." "Human worth is based on social rank; thus, life's value varies accordingly." "The life price of a high-ranking noble is equal to their weight in gold." "The life price of a low-ranking serf is a single piece of straw rope."

 

 

Before the democratic reforms, the theocratic serfdom system in Xizang made society even darker than medieval Europe. Its defining characteristics included the following.

Despite making up less than 5 percent of the region's population, the three major land-owning groups – government officials, aristocrats and monasteries – along with their agents, monopolized nearly all arable land, pastures, forests, rivers, and livestock.  

According to statistics gathered prior to democratic reform, a staggering 99.7 percent of all the 220,000 ha of cultivated land in old Xizang was owned by the government (85,580 ha), the monasteries and high-ranking monks (80,960 ha), and aristocrats (52,800 ha), while the remaining 0.3 percent of cultivated land was owned by a handful of land-tilling peasants in remote areas. Most pastures were controlled by herd owners. A ballad among serfs of the time goes: Even if the snow mountain melts into butter, it is the property of the masters. Even if the river water turns into milk, there is not a single drop for us.

There were 197 hereditary noble families in Xizang before the democratic reforms, with the most powerful among them each controlling dozens of estates and thousands of acres of land. The 14th Dalai Lama's family was among the wealthiest, owning 27 manors, 30 pastures, and over 6,000 serfs. The Dalai Lama alone owned 160,000 taels (one tael = 30 grams) of gold, 95 million taels of silver, over 20,000 pieces of jewelry and jade ware, and more than 10,000 pieces of silk clothing and rare furs.

Serfs treated as personal property of landlords 

The serf-owning class not only controlled all the land but also exercised complete ownership over the serfs, treating them as hereditary property. A well-known folk song described this harsh reality: "Wild beasts roam the mountains freely, but below the mountains, not a single person is without a master."

The self-owning class regarded serfs as their personal property, with absolute power to buy, sell, transfer, gift, mortgage, or exchange them at will. Serfs were not allowed to marry without their master's permission. If a serf was to live outside the estate after marriage, his or her family had to pay a ransom fee. If a serf sought work outside the estate, they had to pay a labor tax to signify their continued servitude. Serfs were bound to the land and forced to perform unpaid labor for their lords and pay numerous taxes and levies. Serfs who attempted to flee were severely punished, often suffering foot amputation, flogging or other cruel penalties. Slaves lived under total subjugation with no personal freedoms or legal protections.  

American anthropologists Melvyn C. Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall, based on field research in the 1980s, wrote in their book Nomads of Western Tibet: The Survival of a Way of Life that "Tibet's system greatly benefited the landowners by effectively allocating labor to their estates." Canadian Tibetologist A. Tom Grunfeld wrote in his 1987 book The Making of Modern Tibet: "Historically there was very little class mobility in Tibet, and for the most part serfs were forced to accept the position they found themselves in at birth. There is no evidence to support the images of a utopian Shangri-la."

Old Xizang's theocratic system differed from other theocratic regimes around the world in that it was a system of absolute religious supremacy. Political authority not only protected religious rule but was also subjugated to it, creating a system where religion and government were fused into one, working together to uphold the dominance of government officials, aristocrats and high-ranking monks.  

Under this theocratic feudal order, religion was deeply entangled with the serfdom system, rather than serving purely spiritual purposes. Monasteries were not just places of worship but also political, economic, and military strongholds that conducted religious activities while exercising territorial control, exploited serfs, hoarded armed forces to maintain dominance, and operated their own judicial systems, meting out brutal punishments. Some monasteries even had internal courtrooms, complete with handcuffs, leg irons, whips, and instruments of torture designed for gouging eyes or severing tendons as punishment.  

Before 1959, there were 2,676 monasteries and 114,925 monks in Xizang. This meant that one in four men in Xizang was a monk, a proportion far exceeding that of medieval European clergy, making the region's theocracy one of the most extreme in history. With such a vast number of non-productive monasteries acting as instruments of political and economic exploitation, Xizang society suffered from extreme resource scarcity and long-term population stagnation.

The serf-owning class not only controlled serfs physically and economically but also exercised severe mental and ideological control. The ruling elite promoted beliefs in "paradise" and "happiness in the afterlife" to manipulate the minds of serfs, conditioning them to accept their oppression as divinely ordained. Serfs were taught that suffering in this life was necessary to atone for sins and that their hardship was a path to a better afterlife.  

Japanese monk Tokan Tada, who visited Xizang in 1913, wrote in his book Tibet Trip Report: "The thoughts of Tibetans are entirely religious. They believe themselves to be deeply sinful and accept the heavy taxation imposed by the Dalai Lama as a means of salvation. They also believe that by reducing their sins in this life, they will find happiness in the next."

Charles Bell, a British diplomat and Tibetologist who visitedXizang, recalled in his book Portrait of a Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth that there was no doubt that the lama used spiritual terror to maintain their influence and keep political power in his hands.  

The ruling class exercised control over all spiritual and cultural life in Xizang. Any ideas or beliefs that contradicted their authority were labeled as heresy and suppressed. One of the most famous cases of persecution for intellectual dissent was that of Gendun Chophel, a renowned modern Tibetan scholar who exposed corruption and decadence among monks and advocated for reforms within Tibetan Buddhism. For his outspokenness, he was imprisoned and persecuted by the local government.

Many journalists and scholars have documented the conditions of Xizang society before 1959. Edmund Candler, a former Daily Mail correspondent in India, wrote in his 1905 book The Unveiling of Lhasa that old Xizang had all the characteristics of a medieval society and it was a feudal system where the lamas were absolute rulers, the serfs their slaves.  

As described by Charles Bell in his 1946 book Portrait of a Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth, Tibetan criminal law was severe. During trials, both convicts and the accused and even the witnesses were often flogged. For the gravest crimes such as repeated theft, violent robbery or serious forgery, punishments included amputation of hands, cutting off the nose or even gouging out the eyes. Eye-gouging was most frequently applied in cases of "political treason."

 

 

Before 1959, young serf girls in Xizang faced an even more horrifying fate – many became the primary victims of sacrificial rituals. In the theocratic feudal system, some monks performed rituals involving human sacrifices, particularly selecting young girls for these ceremonies to appease deities or fulfill "enlightenment through physical sacrifice." Serf girls were considered the most sacred offerings, often used in the production of ritual instruments such as human-skin drums and Tibetan thangka paintings. Monks believed that a girl's body only retained spiritual value if it remained "pure" and "untainted,"meaning she had to be sacrificed before experiencing any form of physical "pollution." Victims were forcibly confined in monasteries, subjected to horrific abuse, including having their tongues cut out, being pierced in the ears to make them deaf, being force-fed special herbal treatments to keep their skin elastic and eventually being flayed alive as ritual sacrifices.  

One of the most shocking artifacts still preserved in the Tibet Museum is the human-skin drum, or "Sister Drum," made from the skin of girls under the age of 16, most of whom came from destitute serf families.

The grim reality of Xizang's theocratic serfdom directly contradicts the romanticized narratives fabricated by the Dalai Lama's group in exile. Their claims, such as "Tibet never experienced famine, and beggars were rare," "Old Tibet was a land of freedom and peace," "Tibet was a harmonious religious sanctuary" and "Monasteries were disciplined centers of education and Tibetan culture," are nothing more than blatant lies designed to deceive the world.  

By the 1950s, when slavery, serfdom, and racial oppression had been condemned and abolished in modern societies, Xizang remained frozen in a brutal feudal theocratic system that trampled on human dignity, grossly violated fundamental human rights, severely hindered Xizang's social progress, isolated Xizang from modern civilization, went against the global tide of progress and obstructed China's overall development. More than just a relic of medieval oppression, Old Xizang's theocratic feudal serfdom was a shameful affront to human civilization, morality and dignity.

 

(CGTN's First Voice offers timely commentary on breaking news, providing clarity on emerging issues and refining the global news agenda with a distinct Chinese perspective. Recently, the PBS program Frontline aired a documentary titled Battle for Tibet, which amplifies the one-sided narratives of "exiled Tibetans" to distort the portrayal of Xizang, sow division, and incite ethnic tensions. In response, First Voice published a rebuttal grounded in historical facts, exposing the harsh realities of old Xizang and the suffering endured by serfs. The article also sheds light on the true nature of the Dalai group – not as "peaceful religious leaders forced into exile," but as defenders of a feudal serfdom system.)