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the central government provides subsidies totalling nearly 8bn yuan a year to minority areas in eight provinces and autonomous regions. Of them, Tibet receives more than 1.2bn yuan. Besides, the state also allocates special funds totalling 600m yuan a year to aid minority areas, such as development funds to support underdeveloped areas, subsidies for areas inhabited by minority nationalities, special investments in capital construction in frontier areas, as well as operating expenses to subsidize border construction.
The government pursues a tax-reduction and tax- exemption policy towards poverty-stricken minority areas in addition to many special measures adopted to lighten their financial burdens, preferential investment for them and send them help in the form of brain power and wholesale contract to enable them to get rid of poverty. Special funds have been set up to supply food and clothing to minority areas. The government has also arranged for the economically developed areas to provide assistance to the economic construction in minority areas. The economic construction in minority areas has made great progress thanks to help from the state and efforts by the local people.
The total output value of industry and agriculture of minority regions in 1949 was 3 66bn yuan; of this, 3.12bn yuan came from agricultural production and 540m yuan from industrial production. In the same areas the total industrial and agricultural output value in 1990 came to 227.28bn yuan, an increase of 23.6 times by calculating at 1980 constant price. Of this, the value of agricultural output was 97.776 billion yuan, up 8.1 times; and 129.506bn yuan for industry, a hike of 135.5 times.
As for employment policy, the Chinese government has formulated a special policy for the minority nationalities. The government requires that state-owned enterprises in minority areas give precedence to local citizens of the minority nationalities over all others when recruiting workers, and that various local governments, when recruiting workers for state- owned enterprises, should employ minority farmers and herders from rural and pastoral areas in a planned way.
The Chinese government has greatly developed medical and health undertakings in the minority regions, tackling the problem of shortage of doctors and medicine that has existed for a long time there. In 1990, health organizations in those regions increased to 31,973, providing 359,830 hospital beds, and the ranks of doctors and nurses have grown to 488,600. While furthering the practice of modern medicine, the government encourages the development of traditional minority medical practice including the Tibetan, Uygur, Mongolian and Dai medicines. The central government has sent a large number of medical teams to minority regions. During the period from 1973 to mid-1987, the state organized medical teams totalling 2,600 persons from some dozen provinces and cities and sent them into Tibet.
The Chinese government has paid a great deal of attention to maintaining and developing the excellent traditional cultures of various nationalities, and made tremendous efforts to promote the culture and education of the minority nationalities. By 1990, there had been 75 institutions of higher leartung established in minority areas where in previous years there were none. A total of 12 nationality colleges run specially
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for minority nationality students have been set up in different parts of the country. In addition, some well-known universities including Beijing University and Qinghua University run classes specially for minority nationality students. When enrolling new students, colleges and vocational secondary schools appropriately relax admission standards for minority examinees.
The government has actively created conditions for teenagers living in pastoral and remote areas to receive education by establishing boarding schools in minority areas, where students coming from pastoral, mountainous and poverty-stricken areas usually enjoy grants-in-aid. The state has transferred many teachers from inland and coastal areas to remote minority regions to help expand the educational undertakings there. Between 1974 and 1988, the number of teachers helping in Tibet alone numbered 2,969. The enrollment of minority students in colleges and universities throughout the country in 1989 was 102.4 times that of 1950; in ordinary middle schools, they totalled 70.3 times that of 1951; and in primary schools, 11.2 times that of 1951.
China's law stipulates that all minroity peoples have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages. In the performance of their functions, the self- government organs in autonomous regions should use one or several locally used languages according to the regulations of autonomy set by the autonomous regions. Those organs which simultaneously use several commonly used languages in their work can give priority to the language of the nationality which exercises regional autonomy. The spoken and written languages of minority nationalities are equal to the Han language (Chinese) in judicial activities. Citizens of all nationalities have the right to use the language of their own nationality in legal proceedings. Trials in regions where minority nationalities live in compact communities or which are inhabited by many nationalities should be conducted in the commonly used language of the locality. Indictments, court verdicts, notices and other documents, if necessary, should be written in one or several local languages.
The central government supports minority nationalities in the development of culture and education through the use of their own languages and has helped ten minority nationalties create their own script. Both central and regional specialised publishing houses and news agencies were established to public minority-language newspapers, magazines and books, which in 1989, according to statistics, were respectively 3.1, 7.6 and 5.8 times the number published throughout the country in 1952. People in minority regions can tune in to the Central People's Broadcasting Station every day to listen to programme in Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazak and Korean languages. Each minority region runs radio and TV programmes in one or several minority languages appropriate to the nationality population living there.
The Chinese government fully respects the traditional culture and customs of minority nationalities, supports various minority arts, and encourages minority people to go in for all forms of artistic and sports activities. People from minority areas can take holidays on their own traditional festivals. Gold, silver and other raw materials are allotted in certain amounis by the government to the minority peopls for the production of
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