In other words, they used political means, laws and customs, besides economic means, to control their personal freedom and exploit their surplus labor. They used "supra-economic coercion" to enslave them. On the basis of feudal land ownership, the feudal lords owned land and other production materials and depended on personal dependent relations to control the serfs. Serfs were a kind of agricultural laborer in the feudal society of western Europe. As Karl Marx said, serfdom was one of the major slavery systems in human history and the essential representation of the feudal exploitation system. Meng Guanglin: As far as I know, serfdom was established in the 10th century in western Europe. "They totally lost their personal freedom and became poorer and poorer every year," she wrote. They also had to pay exorbitant taxes and levies and do heavy compulsory labor. French Tibetologist Alexandra David-Neel wrote in her book "Old Tibet Faces A New China": "In old Tibet, all the peasants are serfs who are in debt for a life-long time. Serfs toiled throughout the year but could hardly feed themselves, and usually had to make a living by borrowing at usurious rates.
Serf owners cruelly exploited serfs through compulsory labor and usury. They were household servants for lords for generations without any production materials or personal freedom. Besides these two types of serfs, there were "nangsen", who made up 5 percent of the total population. The serfs were further divided into three categories, namely "treba" (sharecroppers), who rented land from serf owners and worked as compulsory laborers and "dujung", which means small households working for lords. Zhang Yun: The number of serfs surpassed 90 percent of the population in old Tibet. The seven or eight biggest such families each owned dozens of manors and tens of thousands of ke of land. Aristocrats owned 29.6 percent and high-level monks, 39.5 percent.īefore the democratic reform in 1959, Tibet had 197 families belonging to the hereditary aristocracy, including 25 large families. They barely made up 5 percent of the total Tibetan population but possessed all the farmland, pastures, forests, mountains and rivers, and most of the livestock.Īccording to official statistics dating from the early Qing Dynasty in the 17th century, the local government owned 30.9 percent of more than 3 million ke (1 hectare equals 15 ke) of farmland in Tibet. Serf owners in Tibet were composed of local officials, aristocrats and high-level monks. Great is the power of the nobles and squires over their tenants, who are either farmers tilling the more fertile plains and valleys, or shepherds, clad in their sheepskins, roaming over the mountains." You see a nation still in the feudal age. Tanzen Lhundup: British diplomat Sir Charles Bell, who was regarded as "an expert on Tibet", wrote in his book "Portrait of a Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth": "When you come from Europe or America to Tibet, you are carried back several hundred years. Zhang Yun: Before the democratic reform in 1959, Tibet was a society of feudal serfdom under the integration of religion and politics and the dictatorship of monks and aristocrats, one even darker and more backward than medieval Europe. In terms of history, what kind of system was the Tibetan serf system? Reporter: Jiang Yu's words revealed that the nature of the Dalai Lama's "middle way" is to restore serfdom.
Jiang also said: "The 'middle way' approach that the Dalai Lama is pursuing is aimed at restoring his own 'paradise in the past', which will throw millions of liberated serfs back into a dark cage. Only serf owners could enjoy special privileges under such a system."
Such a serf system, which harbors no democracy, freedom or human rights in any form, was the darkest slavery system in human history. The Tibetan feudal serfdom under theocracy was a combined dictatorship of monks and aristocratsĬhinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said (at a press conference on April 8): "The Dalai Lama is the head representative of the serf system, which integrated religion with politics in old Tibet. Yuan Xiang and Xing Yuhao with the Guangming Daily The reporters who conducted the interviews: Meng Guanglin, professor and course convenor of world history of the Middle Ages at the School of History of Renmin University of China. Tanzen Lhundup, research professor and deputy-director of the Institute of Social Economy of the CTRC. Zhang Yun, research professor of the Institute of History of the China Tibetology Research Center (CTRC). The three experts who gave interviews were:
#FEUDAL KINGDOMS EUROPE DURATION FULL#
BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) - The Guangming Daily on April 15 published an article based on interviews with three Chinese scholars concerning the Tibetan system of feudal serfdom under theocracy and Western European serfdom in the Middle Ages.įollowing is the full text of the article:
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