About Tibet and Taiwan

About Tibet and Taiwan
Mao Zedong, May 10, 1959

We still have two problems, Tibet and Taiwan. This is the time to solve the
Tibet problem. Tibet territory is not small, about 1.2 square kilometers,
approximately the size of twelve Democratic Germany. But the Tibetan
population is only 1.2 millions. There are people ask why CCP doesn¡¯t solve
the Tibetan problem for such a long time. The main reason is that our party
didn¡¯t have much contact with Tibetans. And we deliberately postpone the
social reform in Tibet. In the past, we had an oral agreement with Dalai
Lama that we would precede democratic reform in Tibet after 1962. It won¡¯t
be ready if it is too early. It is also because the serf system of Tibet. In
Tibet there are about 95% working people. Exploiters are about 5%. That
means 60 thousand are exploiters. We need to divide them, get some of them.
It is ready now. And we don¡¯t need to wait until 1963. For this, we need to
thank Nehru and Tibetan rebellions. Their armed rebellion has provided us
the reason to reform Tibet. The rebellions used guns to attack us. We can
now see clearly, who are on our side and who are rebellions.

¡¡¡¡Total population of Tibet is not only 1.2 million, but 3 million. 1.2
million in Tibet and 1.8 in west Sichuan, south Gansu and Yunan, north
Qinghai. Among the 1.8 million Tibetan there were rebellions too. We
suppressed the rebellion and basically solved the problem. Foreigners armed
Tibetan reactionary rulers. Many monasteries were the bases of the
rebellions. Now the party organization has been built in the area of 1.8
million Tibetans. They preceded land reform, liberated serfs, established
agricultural coop. In the past the lama didn¡¯t work. Now, 90 % of lama do.
People organized armed self-guard force.

Now Tibetan problem is easy to be solved. The first step is democratic
revolution. Redistribute the land of serf masters to serfs. The second step
is to organize coop. Among sixty thousand serf masters, ten of them fled to
India. The remaining ones can be divided into left, middle and right three
groups. We should treat them accordingly. To some of them, we need to see
what they really are. We can observe them during the criticizing. Generally
speaking, we need to get support of most of them. Let them support reform.

Now, we have established party organization in Tibetan countryside and
cities. Tibetans are very good and work hard. They fight the rebellions
together with PLA and are organized fast. We already promoted nearly ten
thousand Tibetan carders. In the past ten years, we have trained young
Tibetan carders. They learnt in Chinese. And the Han carders in Tibet learnt
Tibetan language as well. In Tibet, Marxists can cooperate with laborers and
can cooperate well.

Now about Taiwan¡­