The Yarlung Tsangpo River in Medog County  has formed a rich river valley, nurturing a modern generation of the Menba people. After the peaceful liberation of Tibet, the Menba people still live a slash-and-burn cultivation life, and today they are getting richer along with the other ethnic groups in the Tibet Autonomous Region. As the only Menba representative at the National People’s Congress (NPC), Pema Chodron, brought a proposal to this year’s meeting “to further increase county border infrastructure construction”.

Pema Chodron said, “Medog County finally became officially connected by public roads in the last few years. Today, much infrastructure is still not perfect, so we hope we can be able to get more attention from the national level onthe county's’s infrastructure construction, to improve the incomes of those who live on the border regions.”

 “China’s ethnic groups are one big family, and they share the responsibility of promoting ethnic harmony, cooperation, and harmonious development.” Pema Chodron firmly believes that we have to adhere to and improve the system of ethnic regional autonomy, implement the promotion of differentiated support policies towards ethnic regional development, protect and develop ethnic minority outstanding traditionally culturally characteristic towns and villages, increase support for the development of small-population ethnic minorities, implement actions to enrich frontier people, in order to ensure the completion of achieving a comprehensive, well-off society, not one ethnic minority less, ensuring victory in the battle against poverty, so that minority regions do not fall behind.

Similarly, Kelsang Drolgar from Medog County is the only Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) representative from the Lhoba minority group. A member of the CPPCC for four years, she submitted a proposal to increase development in less-populated ethnic minority regions, and has already implemented six. Seeing the positive changes after her hometown opened traffic, she thought about how to implement more projects that can help benefit the people of her hometown.  

This year, Kelsang Drolgar submitted a proposal to the NPC on “measures to improve safeguards for nationally crucial projects in ethnic minority areas”. She came to Beijing for the meeting, and she also specially did relevant research in the capital.

Kelsang Drolgar’s minority townships are all border regions where economic development is lagging behind. She called on the central government to continue its interest in the development of border regions. She thinks that General Secretary Xi Jinping theory of “precision poverty” will be a breakthrough for the development level of ethnic minority regions, which will create conditions for ethnic minorities to develop and progress together. 

Kelsang Drolgar said, “as a CPPCC member from an ethnic minority region, I am undertaking an important mission, I will strive to fulfill my duties, promote policies for a good country to the masses, perform supervision work, and make the people of Medog County a well-off society along with the rest of the country. I’m looking forward to the state increasing the level of investment projects for ethnic minority regions, ensuring the implementation of these projects, so that the people can receive more benefits.”

 “Last year, I brought the proposal on ‘implementing beautiful countryside construction in Leibu Menba Township, Cona County’. Right now, our beautiful countryside is in the middle of construction, and has completed the model construction on the ecological civilized middle-class village, greatly improving the local people’s living environment, fully laying the foundation to opening Leibu’s tourism industry, and making the local people see and taste the benefits.” Tsedron, a Menba minority member of the CPPCC National Committee from Cona County said, “Roads go through everything. Now, transportation is still restricting the bottleneck of our hometown’s economic development. The people’s greatest expectation is to have enough oil as soon as possible, and this year I brought forth several proposals for continuing to strengthen Menba township transportation construction.“