Growing up in the west (Europe), I never even once heard about serfdom and what kind of role it played in Tibet, prior to the Chinese Red Army liberation. Never once heard the perspective or stories from former serfs.
This documentary suddenly popped up in my YT feed.
It’s quite astonishing thinking about it. How I’ve only ever been exposed to the “Free Tibet!”-crowd and their arguments, while never actually learning about (or hearing about) the actual material and living conditions of the serf population.
Even though this will clearly be called “CPC propaganda” or whatever, it’s really refreshing to get another perspective and some nuance on the history of Tibet.
Great watch with some harrowing stories from former serfs. Really puts things into perspective.
Here’s some further reading for you on this topic: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/strong-anna-louise/1959/tibet/index.htm
It’s a book written by an American journalist who visited Tibet just as it was in the process of abolishing serfdom, and got to witness it in person and talk to the people there who told their stories about what life was like before.
Highly, highly recommend every communist to read this at least once.
I also witnessed the delinquency and racism towards Hong Kong Canadians by the members of “Free Tibet” association in Parkdale high School of Toronto city of Canada that consist of Tibetans who fled their country before Communist takeover as one additional evidence that the culture of Tibet before Communist period is toxic. Anyway, the Pax Americana always complain about Communist takeover and disregard the fact that Communists took over countries that had more worse human rights records before the Communist period even on the assumption that the accusations by Pax Americana school textbooks towards the Communist is true.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
