Dorje Tseten

Dorje Tseten, also Duojie Caidan (多傑才旦); November 1926, Huangzhong - July 6, 2013, Beijing) is a scholar, historian and Chinese politician of Tibetan ethnicity. He was chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) before becoming the first director of the China Tibetology Research Center.

Early life
Tseten was born in November 1926 in Huangzhong County, Qinhai Province.

In September 1948, Tseten graduated from Beijing Normal University with a degree in education.

Career
He was one of the few Tibetan communists, a group of scientists and teachers, who were sent to Tibet to extol the benefits of Marxism-Leninism. The group arrived Chamdo early in the winter of 1951.

On 28 March 1959, he was appointed as a member of the preparatory committee for establishing the TAR. During the Cultural Revolution, he went into hiding.

In 1981, he became Vice President of the People's Congress of the TAR. From March 1983 to June 1985, he was one of the secretaries of the Communist Party in Tibet. From April 1983 to 1985, he was chairman of the People's Committee of TAR.

In 1986, he was removed from his post in Tibet, following a change in the Communist Party's position on Tibet after the 1987-1989 protests. He was appointed as the director of China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing, and he remained in this position until 2000.

He retired in April 2004, at the age of 78.

He died on 6 July 2013 in Beijing.

Views on Tibetan education
In 1991, he published his book on education in Tibet, describing Tibetan language education as a crucial issue given "strong differences of opinion". He attributed the absence of Tibetan education during the Cultural Revolution to the rapid expansion of education, the shortage of teachers and textbooks, and the influence of leftist ideology. It emphasized the importance of Tibetan in the development of education and economy.

He reported that in a 1982 pilot project in three high schools in Lhasa, Gyantse, and Lhokha to compare the respective merits of Tibetan vs Han, classes taught in Tibetan at Gyantsé averaged twice as many exam marks as the classes taught in Han. The project was discontinued due to lack of books, qualified teachers and mismanagement. He recommended that Han not be taught in primary schools in rural areas and the use of Tibetan in education gradually be applied to middle school.