Reportage – 2007

China fumes over Dalai Lama's successor plan

MCLEOD GANJ, India, 1 December 2007 — Giving a major blow in the face to China's new design to control and use the influence of the next Dalai Lama to rule Tibet, the Dalai Lama said he may choose his successor while he is alive.

The Dalai Lama, 72, has repeatedly said that should he die while Tibetans are still in exile and China is in control of Tibet, his reincarnation will be born in a free world.

His suggestion of picking his successor while he is still alive reproached China's new rules requiring their permission for Tibetan Lama's to reincarnate.

"If China selected my successor after my death, the people of Tibet would not support him as there would be no Tibetan heart in him," he told a Japanese newspaper last week.

China retorted instantly, stating that the Dalai Lama appointing a successor before he dies will bypass historical and religious traditions.

"The Dalai Lama's appointing successor will violate religious rituals and historical conventions of Tibetan Buddhism," Xinhua quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao as saying.

The Dalai Lama has suggested a few options for selecting his successor, one of which was similar to electing the Pope where senior lamas would choose the next Dalai Lama.

Traditionally, his successor is the reincarnation of the one before. However, there is also Tibetan tradition and procedures for going the way what the Dalai Lama is proposing.

But never in history there was any requirement of approval from the Chinese government or its role in the reincarnation of Tibetan Lamas.

Although the Dalai Lama has presented the new options to choose his successor, he has not yet elaborated on the procedure.

"When my physical condition becomes weak, and there are serious preparations for death, then this event should happen," he has said in the Indian holy city of Amritsar on the sidelines of an inter-faith meeting.

However, he has added, "According to my regular medical check-up I am good for another few decades."