Any Job That Benefits the People is a Glorious Occupation

In the forty years since the peaceful liberation of Tibet, Tibet's achievements in politics, economics, and culture, obtained under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, have attracted worldwide attention. Tibet's education has also undergone fundamental changes, and a multilayered and multiformatted educational network extending from preschool education to basic education, ordinary tertiary education, vocational/technical education, and adult education has already basically taken shape. Or course, because of the constraints of various factors, the level of productive forces in Tibet is still very low compared to the that in the interior regions, and its economic development is uneven. The agricultural and pastoral districts, where natural, insular, and supply-type economies predominate, basically depend on nature for farming and animal husbandry, and their ability to resist natural calamities is poor. A number of simple scientific and technological achievements that practice has proven to be effective and amenable to popularization can hardly be used, and excellent natural advantages cannot be turned into economic advantages. In industrial enterprises, economic returns are poor because of meager foundations and irrational product structures. But the principal reason is the low quality of the workers. Statistics compiled in 1988 among people of various professions in Tibet indicate that the proportion of people with college, senior middle school, junior middle school, and primary school educations as well as illiterates and semi-literates is 1:26:70:102 sic], and that 93.7 percent of the illiterates and semi-literates are workers in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery. In the present era of constantly deepening reforms of the economic system and of a thriving commodity economy, there is an acute shortage of trained personnel in all Tibet's trades and professions, and the contradictions engendered by the low quality of personnel are coming increasingly to the fore. Raising the quality of the people, vigorously developing education, and, in particular, developing vocational/technical education that rapidly converts science and technology into forces of production are matters of increasing urgency.