Tibet has undeniably changed for the better

The white paper issued by the State Council Information Office on Tibet on Wednesday provides an account of how development, progress and prosperity have transformed the once feudal region.

Any unbiased observer will recognize that this change has been a historic contribution to the overall advancement of humanity.

In old Tibet, government officials, aristocrats and senior lamas, who represented merely 5 percent of the population, had a monopoly on almost all cultivated land, pastures, mountains, rivers and most livestock while the other 95 percent of the population, which comprised serfs and slaves, had neither personal possessions nor personal freedom, let alone any rights.