As the Dalai Lama — the spiritual leader of Tibet — visits the US to receive medical treatment on his knees, concerns over who would succeed him have become acute. While Tibetans around the world pray that the 88-year-old Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, still has plenty of life ahead of him, China is eagerly awaiting his demise, so that it can install a puppet successor.
Tibetans regard the Dalai Lama as the living incarnation of Buddha. Since 1391, the Dalai Lama has been reincarnated 13 times. When one Dalai Lama dies, the search for the next one begins, with a council of senior disciples taking responsibility for identifying him, based on signs and visions, but in recent years, the Chinese government has insisted that only it has the right to identify the next Dalai Lama.
This would not be the first time China selected a leader of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1995, it anointed its own Panchen Lama, whose spiritual authority is second only to that of the Dalai Lama, after abducting the actual Panchen Lama — a six-year-old boy who had already been confirmed by the Dalai Lama. Almost three decades later, the real Panchen Lama is among the world’s longest-serving political prisoners.
Illustration: Mountain People
China also appointed the Karmapa, Tibetan Buddhism’s third-most important spiritual leader and the head of the Karma Kagyu sect, but in 1999, its appointee, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, fled to India. The ease with which the 14-year-old Karmapa escaped China raised suspicions among Indians about his loyalties. After imposing travel restrictions on him, India in 2018 decided to no longer recognize the China-anointed Karmapa as the legitimate head of his sect. Now, he and his rival Karmapa, Trinley Thaye Dorje, have issued a joint statement pledging to cooperatively resolve the leadership split in the Karma Kagyu sect.
The Dalai Lama is China’s “white whale.”
The incumbent — who was identified as the Dalai Lama in 1937, at age 2 — has been a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party since China’s 1951 annexation of Tibet. With his relentless espousal of non-violence, the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, embodies Tibetan resistance to Chinese occupation. (Had Tibet remained self-governing like Taiwan, it would be the world’s 10th-largest nation by area.)
In his past incarnations, the Dalai Lama was not only Tibet’s spiritual leader, but also its political leader, making him a kind of cross between a pope and a president, but the Dalai Lama ceded his political role in 2011 to a Tibetan government-in-exile, which is democratically elected every five years by Tibetan refugees living in India and elsewhere.
Moreover, the Dalai Lama has declared that he might choose not to be reborn — a decision that would undermine the legitimacy of any Chinese-anointed successor. He knows that, for China, a Dalai Lama devoted to the Chinese Communist Party is much more useful than no Dalai Lama at all. He also knows that, while he has retained his mental acuity, his body is weakening. In 2016, he underwent radiation therapy for prostate cancer. He says he was “completely cured,” but he continues to struggle with his knees. Given his advanced age, more health problems are to be expected.
The Dalai Lama’s frailty is one reason why his travel schedule has slowed considerably, but it is not the only one: Bowing to Chinese pressure, most nations — including European democracies and Asia’s Buddhist states (except Japan) — are unwilling to grant him entry. Fortunately, some nations have retained their backbones. The US is hosting the Dalai Lama for knee treatment, while India has proudly been his home for more than 65 years. India has officially designated the Dalai Lama its “most esteemed and honored guest,” while the Tibetan leader describes himself as a “son of India.”
In fact, India is home to the vast majority of Tibetan exiles and has played a central role in helping to preserve Tibetan culture, including by supporting Tibetan-language schools. By contrast, China has been working actively to destroy Tibetan culture and identity, especially since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been in charge.
Meanwhile, China’s appropriation of Tibetan natural resources has gone into overdrive, with consequences that extend far beyond the Tibetan Plateau. Resource-rich Tibet is a source of fresh water for more than one-fifth of the world’s population and a global biodiversity hotspot. The plateau influences Asia’s weather and monsoonal patterns, as well as the northern hemisphere’s “atmospheric general circulation” — the system of winds that helps transport warm air from the equator toward higher latitudes, creating different climate zones.
It is imperative that the US and India work together to foil China’s plan to handpick the next Dalai Lama. Already, the US’ Tibetan Policy and Support Act, which took effect in 2020, says that “the wishes of the 14th Dalai Lama, including any written instructions, should play a determinative role in the selection, education, and veneration of a future 15th Dalai Lama.”
It also calls for sanctions on Chinese officials who interfere with Tibetan Buddhist succession practices.
However, more must be done. US President Joe Biden should take the opportunity presented by the Dalai Lama’s knee treatment to fulfill a 2020 campaign promise to meet with the Dalai Lama. More broadly, the US should work with India to devise a multilateral strategy to counter Xi’s plan to capture the more than 600-year-old institution of the Dalai Lama. This must include efforts to persuade the Dalai Lama to spell out, once and for all, the rules that must be followed to identify his successor.
Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
They did it again. For the whole world to see: an image of a Taiwan flag crushed by an industrial press, and the horrifying warning that “it’s closer than you think.” All with the seal of authenticity that only a reputable international media outlet can give. The Economist turned what looks like a pastiche of a poster for a grim horror movie into a truth everyone can digest, accept, and use to support exactly the opinion China wants you to have: It is over and done, Taiwan is doomed. Four years after inaccurately naming Taiwan the most dangerous place on
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
RSS