Ministerial-level Tibetan official dies of illness

Rinzin Wanggyai, who was a ministerial-level official and had served as the Party chief of a township in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, died of illness in the regional capital Lhasa on Aug. 25. He was 74.

Rinzin Wanggyai served as the secretary of the Lhunze County's Nyaimai Township Committee of the Communist Party of China . He had also been an alternate member of the 10th Central Committee of the CPC, and a member of the Standing Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee of the CPC.

But he had served at the post of the Party chief of the Nyaimai Township for the longest period of time.

Rinzin Wanggyai, a native of Nyaimai, was a serf of a major serf owner in the township before the peaceful liberation of Tibetin 1951.

Tibet carried out democratic reforms in 1959, which turned serfs, accounting for 95 percent of the total population in region at that time, into masters of their own destiny.

After the democratic reforms, Rinzin Wanggyai became chairman of the farmers' association in Nyaimai. He joined the CPC in 1962 and served as the Party chief of Nyaimai Township.

He concentrated on fulfilling a range of major tasks, including leading locals to reclaim land from wilderness 4,200 meters above the sea level into farmland and developing education.

Today, all school-age children in the township are studying in schools. In contrast, only 25 people were literate in the township more than five decades ago, all of whom were nobles or lamas.

In 2007, the per capita annual income of farmers in the township of 2,304 people reached 3,800 yuan .

Source:Xinhua