The report follows Beijing's protests against a meeting this week between U.S. President Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama, who has accused the Chinese of committing ``cultural genocide'' in the homeland he fled 41 years ago.
It also came as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Chinese leaders Thursday in Beijing for talks expected to include discussions of human rights and Taiwan, which China also considers its rightful territory.
However, when Albright urged Chinese President Jiang Zemin to ``seize the moment'' and hold reconciliation talks with Taiwan, her appeal was turned down.
In two sets of talks Thursday that lasted an hour and three-quarters, Jiang insisted that Taiwan must first acknowledge there is one China, a senior U.S. official told reporters afterward. He said the issue dominated the talks in the Chinese leadership compound.
Little mention of Tibet was made, according to reports from the meetings.
The Chinese Tibet report was issued to ``refute the fallacy that 'Tibetan culture has become extinct' clamored by the Dalai Lama clique,'' China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
It accused the exiled Tibetan leader of fomenting separatism and of trying to prevent development by seeking to restore the feudal theocratic system that existed in Tibet before China took control.
The report cited progress in protecting the Tibetan language, cultural relics, ancient books and records, folk customs, arts and the establishment of Tibetan studies, medicine and recreation facilities.
``Tibetan culture has all along been a dazzling pearl in the treasure-house of Chinese culture,'' it said.
Critics of China's often-harsh rule in Tibet contend that despite an official emphasis on bilingual instruction in Tibetan schools and programs to preserve and restore local antiquities, the local language and culture are endangered by an influx of ethnic Han Chinese--the nation's dominant ethnic group--into the region.
Although the Chinese government prides itself on respecting the customs and languages of its many ethnic minorities, those minorities face the same troubles of poverty and marginalization across China.
Last week, the U.S. State Department's coordinator on Tibetan issues, Julia Taft, told Congress that ethnic Tibetans were failing to benefit from Chinese-led economic development in their homeland. She also cited human rights abuses such as arbitrary arrest, detention without public trial, torture in prisons and an intensification of controls over Tibetan monasteries and on monks and nuns.
China seized Tibet in 1950, a year after the Communists took power in Beijing. After a failed uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama led more than 100,000 Tibetans into exile in India. During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Tibetan monasteries were ransacked, relics destroyed and monks and nuns persecuted.
The Dalai Lama, who is widely revered among Tibetan Buddhists despite Chinese efforts to discredit him, has urged the 6 million Tibetans remaining in Tibet to do what they can to preserve their ancient culture, religion and language.
Concerns over preservation of traditional Tibetan culture have accentuated controversy over World Bank support for a project to resettle 58,000 Chinese and Muslim farmers on lands in western China's Qinghai province that traditionally were inhabited by Tibetan and Mongolian nomads.
The Tibet Information Network, an independent monitoring group, joined dozens of members of the U.S. Congress and other critics in urging Wednesday that the results of an independent review, which condemned the plan, be made public before the bank decides whether to provide a dlrs 40 million loan to China to support the project.
