WUXI, China — China celebrated 50 years of direct control over Tibet with a lavish international Buddhist conference Saturday featuring a rare appearance by Beijing’s handpicked Buddhist leader.
March 28 marks the date when China ended the 1959 Tibetan uprising, sending Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama over the Himalayas into exile in India.
In China’s official version of events, Tibet in mid-century was a remote medieval backwater where most people lived in servitude to the Buddhist theocracy and nobility until the Communist government stepped in. To support that contention, China commemorated a new political holiday Saturday — “Serfs Liberation Day.”
“Just as Europe can’t return to the medieval era and the United States can’t go back to the times before the Civil War, Tibet can never restore the old serf society era,” Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party boss of the region, told a crowd of more than 13,000 in Lhasa, the Tibetan regional capital.
The Tibetan government- in-exile said on its website that the new holiday would be a day of mourning for Tibetans around the world.
The World Buddhist Forum in Wuxi featured an appearance by the Panchen Lama, the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, whose status is rejected by followers of the Dalai Lama. The Panchen Lama’s rare appearance was a strong indication of Beijing’s determination to boost his profile as a credible religious figure.
