China

Beijing now has little interest in new discussions with the Dalai Lama because it believes he still is not serious about making the kind of compromise China can accept. The 1995 controversy over the selection of a new Panchen Lama in China illustrates the enormous difficulty both sides have in compromising, as well as why Beijing has such misgivings about the Dalai Lama.

When the tenth Panchen Lama died in Tibet on January 28, 1989, the Chinese government agreed to permit the selection of a new Panchen Lama. Because they were atheists, it made no difference to the Communist party leaders which boy was ultimately chosen to be the new Panchen Lama, but since it did matter to Tibetans, the selection process would obviously need to adhere to Tibetan customs and norms to some degree in order to ensure that the new incarnation would be accepted as authentic and legitimate in Tibet. At the same time, Beijing considered it politically necessary that the search process unequivocally demonstrate its authority over the selection of

reincarnations, and that the next Panchen Lama be found in China. Beijing's strategy for achieving these two goals was to constitute a "traditional" Tibetan search team composed of lamas and monk officials of the late Panchen Lama's monastery (Tashilhunpo) and empower them to employ customary methods (dreams, omens, signs, searches) to identify a set of incarnation "candidates." Once this was completed, a religious lottery would be held in which one of the candidates would be anonymously drawn from a "golden urn" under the supervision of the central government, which would then formally confirm and install the boy selected.^[1] The custom of a golden urn lottery was begun by the Qing dynasty emperor Qian Long in 1792.

The problem with this plan was that Tibetan norms required that the new Panchen Lama be confirmed by the Dalai Lama, and Beijing's plan included no role for him. This was not surprising given the fact that the Dalai Lama rejected both the golden urn lottery and the authority of the Chinese government to approve or disapprove the final selection of Tibetan lamas; he, to the contrary, claimed that ultimate authority rested with him.^[2] Consequently, while excluding the Dalai Lama from the selection process simplified the finding of a new Panchen Lama for Beijing (and reinforced its political claims), doing so was likely to result in the Dalai Lama rejecting the legitimacy of the Chinese-selected Panchen Lama and probably selecting a different Panchen Lama in exile. Consequently, the officials of the late Panchen Lama urged modification of the initial guidelines so that an attempt could be made to reach some arrangement with the Dalai Lama over the selection.

The Dalai Lama also appeared to want to prevent the selection of the next Panchen Lama from turning into a political circus. In March 1991, he sent a message to the Chinese embassy in New Delhi saying he would be willing to assist in the

selection process, and from 1990 to 1993, his elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, urged the Chinese government on several occasions to involve the Dalai Lama by allowing him to send lamas to Tibet to assist in the search.^[3]

China did not agree to this, but it did permit Tashilhunpo monastery's Chadrel Rimpoche, the head of the search team, to contact the Dalai Lama. On July 17, 1993, Chadrel Rimpoche took the occasion of a Gyalo Thondup visit to Beijing to give him a communiqué for the Dalai Lama.^[4] Written in the old Tibetan scroll format and referring to the Dalai Lama with the most exalted titles, honorifics, and phraseologies, it asked for the Dalai Lama's prayers and help in attaining a speedy decision in the selection of the Panchen Lama; that is, it asked the Dalai Lama to cooperate in the selection process.^[5] The Chinese attitude at this time seemed to be that it would be excellent if the Dalai Lama was willing to cooperate, but if he was not, China would continue without him.

Gyalo Thondup carried the letter to the Dalai Lama in India, but his response was tough, asking that Chadrel Rimpoche come to India for consultations.^[6] Overtly this was not a negative response, but since internal politics in China would make such a visit impossible, it left ambiguous how far the Dalai Lama was willing to go to ensure that the next Panchen Lama would be chosen without political controversy. This response, which the Chinese publicly ignored, provided the hard-liners in China further evidence that it was futile to try to deal with the Dalai Lama.

Because it was critical from a Tibetan point of view that the Dalai Lama recognize the new Panchen Lama, Chadrel Rimpoche continued to communicate informally with the Dalai Lama. By the end of 1994 the search team had compiled the list of "candidates" from which the eleventh Panchen Lama would be chosen, and Chadrel Rimpoche sent the Dalai Lama a letter providing detailed information (including photographs)

on about twenty-five candidates. He also informed the Dalai Lama that all signs indicated that one of these boys—Gendun Choekyi Nyima—was the true incarnation.^[7] The Dalai Lama examined the evidence early in 1995 and agreed with Chadrel Rimpoche's conclusion, despite the urging of some in India that he order the Tashilhunpo monks in exile to search for the next Panchen Lama outside of Tibet. By early February the Dalai Lama got a message back to Chadrel Rimpoche stating that he had done divination that confirmed Gendun Choekyi Nyima.

This was an important victory for Chadrel Rimpoche and the officials who had urged that Tashilhunpo be permitted to search for the reincarnation in accordance with Tibetan norms and that the Dalai Lama be contacted. It now seemed certain there would be only one Panchen Lama, found in China as Beijing had initially mandated. All that was left was to work out how to finalize the selection and announce the decision so that neither the Dalai Lama nor Beijing lost face.^[8] The selection of the previous Panchen Lama (which took place over the years from 1941 to 1949) seemed to offer a model for such a compromise.

Relations between the Panchen and Dalai Lamas in the early twentieth century were poor, so when the thirteenth Dalai Lama levied new taxes on feudal estate holders after his return to Lhasa from India in 1913, the ninth Panchen Lama refused, arguing that the terms of his land grants (from the Manchu emperor) precluded such additional taxation.^[9] The thirteenth Dalai Lama's insistence on payment precipitated the flight of the ninth Panchen Lama into exile in China together with his top officials in 1924. He died there in 1937.

In keeping with Tibetan tradition, the late Panchen Lama's officials (those in exile in China) set about to find his incarnation. In 1941 they identified a Tibetan boy in Qinghai province and decided he was the new Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama, however, refused to accept the boy found in Qinghai province,

instructing the Panchen Lama's entourage in China to send him to Lhasa for a final examination that would include two other candidates. When the late Panchen's officials objected, insisting they were positive their boy was the true incarnation, the Tibetan government withheld its final recognition of the Qinghai boy as the new Panchen Lama.

The Panchen Lama's officials in China meanwhile had also been seeking formal recognition of their selection from Chiang Kaishek's government, China having claimed ultimate authority over the selection of the Panchen and Dalai Lamas since the Qing dynasty.^[10] After much deliberation, the Chinese government finally accepted the choice of the late Panchen's officials, in large part to persuade them to flee to Taiwan. On June 3, 1949, while the Nationalists were in the process of withdrawing from the mainland to Taiwan, Li Zongren, the acting president of the Chinese Nationalist government, formally recognized the Qinghai boy—who was then eleven years old^[11] —and on August 10, 1949, an enthronement ceremony was held in Kumbum monastery in Qinghai province, attended by the head of the Chinese government's Commission for Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs (on behalf of Li Zongren). There were, of course, no officials from the Tibetan government in Lhasa since they did not accept the legitimacy of either of these actions.^[12]

Despite the Nationalist government's recognition, the Panchen Lama decided to throw in his lot with the Chinese Communists since they seemed more likely to be able to help him return to Tibet. Thus, as soon as the People's Liberation "liberated" Qinghai province in September 1949, the Panchen Lama's officials made cordial contacts with them, and on October 1, 1949—the inauguration day of the new People's Republic of China—the Panchen Lama sent Mao Zedong the following telegram:

For generations the Panchen has been treated most generously and bestowed many honours by the country [China]. For more than twenty years, I have never slackened my efforts to defend

the territorial integrity of Tibet, but nothing has been achieved, for which I feel most guilty. I am now staying in Qinghai, waiting for the order to return to Tibet. Thanks to the leadership of Your Excellencies, Northwest China has been liberated and the Central People's Government has been established—events that all the people who are proud of the country find highly inspiring. These accomplishments will surely bring happiness to the people and make it possible for the nation to stand on its feet again; and with these accomplishments the liberation of Tibet is only a matter of time. On behalf of all the Tibetan people, I pay Your Excellencies the highest respects and pledge our wholehearted support.^[13]

The following year, Mao Zedong accepted that boy as the tenth Panchen Lama and agreed to restore his position in Tibet when it was reunified.^[14]

Nevertheless, for most Tibetans, this Panchen Lama's legitimacy was in question since the Dalai Lama had not accepted him as the true reincarnation. Consequently, when the Dalai Lama's delegation arrived in Beijing in 1951 to negotiate the Seventeen-Point Agreement, China took steps to rectify this by insisting that the Tibetan side recognize the boy before the talks could begin. The Tibetan delegation had no religious authority to make such a judgment and was forced to telegraph the Dalai Lama for instructions. The Dalai Lama quickly performed a holy divination that conveniently confirmed the Qinghai boy as the true tenth Panchen Lama, and there the matter ended until his death in 1989.

Thus, despite the contested nature of the confirmation process, there was a recent precedent in which the Tashilhunpo monks and officials independently identified a candidate, the Chinese government accepted the boy without resort to a golden urn lottery, and the Dalai Lama subsequently confirmed the choice. However, despite this precedent, the confirmation of the new Panchen Lama ended in a political debacle.

Since Chadrel had already obtained the Dalai Lama's confirmation of Gendun Choekyi Nyima, it was absolutely essential

that he secure China's approval of the boy. His plan apparently was that Beijing would first formally confirm the boy and then the Dalai Lama would indicate that he accepted the choice as correct. In other words, the previous precedent would be followed. Chinese media indicated that on about February 11, 1995, Chadrel Rimpoche sought to persuade the central government to dispense with the golden urn lottery, assuring them that this was in accordance with Tibetan customs and that his own divine lottery conducted before the stupa (religious tomb) of the late Panchen Lama in Tashilhunpo had determined that Gendun Choekyi Nyima was incontrovertibly the correct incarnation.^[15] His efforts, apparently, were unsuccessful because Chinese sources indicate that in March 1995 the government asked Chadrel to submit three to five names for the golden urn drawing.^[16] By the middle of the following month, reports indicated that Han and Tibetan officials in China were preparing to assemble for the installation ceremony, although nothing yet had been publicly announced. It was at this juncture that the Dalai Lama suddenly announced to the world on May 14, 1995, that he recognized Gendun Choekyi Nyima as the new Panchen Lama. His statement asserted that the Chinese government had no authority over this selection by saying, "The search and recognition of Panchen Rimpoche's reincarnation is a religious matter and not political."^[17]

The announcement, of course, embarrassed and infuriated the Chinese government. Beijing had tried to do things in a "Tibetan" way through Chadrel Rimpoche and Tashilhunpo monastery, and had even approached the Dalai Lama to help, but now had been humiliatingly upstaged and made to seem irrelevant to the decision-making process. The Dalai Lama had shown the world that from exile he could decide the results of an incarnation search conducted within Tibet under the auspices of the Chinese government.

Why the Dalai Lama chose to do this, however, is unclear, and neither side has indicated what really happened. The official

Chinese version asserts that Chadrel illegally leaked (unspecified) state secrets to the Dalai Lama—Chadrel was sentenced to six years in prison in May 1997 for conspiring to split the nation and for betraying state secrets.^[18] But were his contacts with the Dalai Lama really unsanctioned?

Chadrel clearly had state permission to meet Gyalo Thondup in Beijing and send a letter to the Dalai Lama through him, and the Dalai Lama's response, as mentioned earlier, was also "official" in that it was transmitted through the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. Moreover, Chadrel Rimpoche was a patriotic, pro-government lama whose political career had been based on opposing splittism and supporting Tibet as part of China. He was well known in government circles and trusted by the Tibet Autonomous Region Government (whom Beijing had placed in charge of the search). Consequently, it is unlikely that he decided on his own to interact secretly with the Dalai Lama on a matter of such obvious national importance. On the other hand, it is possible that while top officials in Beijing knew in general about the contacts, it did not know the details, particularly that Chadrel was sending information on all the candidates.

Whichever of the above scenarios is correct, it appears that when Chadrel tried to persuade the central government to dispense with the golden urn lottery, an impasse developed over whether eliminating the golden urn lottery might inadvertently allow the Dalai Lama to claim he had confirmed the candidate before Beijing, and if so, what should be done about this. While the issue was being debated in Beijing, Chadrel—this time certainly without informing anyone in the government—apparently contacted the Dalai Lama and conveyed to him news of the impasse. This information appears to have set in motion discussions in Dharamsala that ended with the Dalai Lama's preemptive announcement.^[19]

Hopefully, the full details of this incident will be revealed in the coming years, but for the moment, what is important is its

impact on the Tibet Question. Regardless of what transpired in China and India, the Dalai Lama's decision to preemptively announce the new Panchen Lama was, to say the least, politically inastute. Even if Beijing ultimately decided to select a different child, the Dalai Lama would have been able to denounce the choice and then specify his own selection. Alternatively, had Beijing ultimately decided to select the right boy, the Dalai Lama could have then given his critical seal of approval, confirming that the correct Panchen Lama was chosen. Both sides could then have claimed to their followers and the world their representation of what the event "really" meant, but the Dalai Lama would have sent a powerful political signal to Beijing's top leaders that he was genuinely interested in working with them to reduce conflict and overcome problems.

Since the Dalai Lama obviously knew his preemptory announcement would infuriate the Chinese, we must assume that either he actually wanted to show Beijing and the world his paramount role in this issue regardless of the political fallout, or he believed that his unilateral action was necessary to push China to choose the correct boy, the logic being that China would not reject his selection since it was also the choice of Chadrel Rimpoche (and thus Tashilhunpo monastery's own search team).

Whatever the Dalai Lama's motivation, his announcement was seen in China as a hostile political act aimed at embarrassing China and an example of the Dalai Lama's relentless pursuit of political kudos in the West at China's expense. From China's perspective, once again, at a critical time, the Dalai Lama had thumbed his nose at Beijing, sending a clear signal that when it got down to fishing or cutting bait, he still preferred cutting bait!

The Dalai Lama's announcement, of course, placed China in a difficult predicament. Since a basic prerequisite of the entire process was to affirm the Chinese central government's authority to select incarnations, Beijing had to decide whether it

should challenge the Dalai Lama's (and, of course, its own search committee's) choice. If it agreed to the Dalai Lama's choice, it could give the appearance that it was merely following his more fundamental authority. However, if it did not and selected someone else, it might have a Panchen Lama that many (if not most) Tibetans refused to accept as genuine.

It took Beijing five months to come to a decision, but finally it disqualified Gendun Choekyi Nyima and used the golden urn lottery to select a different boy, whom the Chinese government formally confirmed in November 1995. The Dalai Lama and his supporters vociferously attacked this decision, portraying the boy as a false incarnation and charging Beijing with blatant infringement of Tibet's religious freedom and the Dalai Lama's historic prerogative. Beijing was placed on the defensive on this issue and still is. It now has a prominent incarnate lama whom most Tibetans are loathe to accept, and another boy, Gendun Choekyi Nyima, who must be kept under constant surveillance to prevent his being whisked off into exile—an act that would substantially compound the current debacle.

While many in exile and in the West see this as a victory for the Dalai Lama, it is hard to understand their logic. To be sure, it made Tibetans and their Western supporters feel good to see the Dalai Lama exert his authority over this issue, but the price he paid was substantial and the gains were minuscule. In practical terms, the Panchen Lama he selected is not safe in exile under his tutelage, so he has in effect relegated the boy he chose to a life of house arrest. This creates a powerful human rights issue for the exiles, but only at the cost of further fueling the distrust and animosity that many in China already feel toward him, just at the time when he is under increasing pressure to persuade China to soften its policies in Tibet. Moreover, his announcement has badly undermined the credibility of the more moderate Chinese officials who sold the State Council on the idea that an ethnically sensitive selection process would

be in China's best interests. It has therefore reinforced the hard-liners' contention that China cannot trust or work with the Dalai Lama and set back chances that China will agree to renew talks with him. And it has allowed the "prize"—the new Panchen Lama—to fall under the control of China. If the Dalai Lama really wanted to play political hardball, it would have made more sense for him to select a Panchen Lama in exile to be educated and groomed as he saw fit.

But such is the nature of the Tibet Question. Even when both sides have a common interest in preventing a disaster, emotion and issues of "face"—political pride—easily derail them and marginalize reason. The Dalai Lama knows intellectually that he needs more friends and supporters in Beijing, not Washington or New York City, but he finds it emotionally difficult to take appropriate actions to achieve that end.

In the wake of the Panchen Lama debacle, Beijing has intensified its propaganda attacks on the Dalai Lama, using a new level of crude and insulting language. This anti-Dalai Lama campaign has continued to the present, and many in China are convinced that waiting until the sixty-two-year-old Dalai Lama dies is the simplest answer to their "Tibet" problem. At the same time, the Chinese government is proceeding full speed with its policy of developing and modernizing Tibet. It hopes this policy will solidify its position in Tibet regardless of what the Dalai Lama or Tibetans think or do, and will ultimately create a new generation of Tibetans who consider it in their interests to be a part of China. If nothing else, this policy will so radically change the demographic composition of Tibet and the nature of its economy, that failure to win over a new generation of Tibetans will not weaken Beijing's control over Tibet.

Consequently, from the Chinese side, conditions now are not highly conducive to serious participation in a negotiated solution, let alone dramatic concessions. Beijing's integrationist policy is progressing, its trust of the Dalai Lama is at an all-time

low, and the absence of a credible threat of external sanctions from the United States, Europe, and Japan allows them to pursue this with impunity.

On the other hand, the death of Deng Xiaoping in February of 1997 has provided the Dalai Lama a tiny new window of opportunity. It is clear that many experts and moderates in China disagree with the assumptions underlying the current hard-line approach and question whether the current policy will produce the long-term stability in Tibet that China wants. They realize that it is exacerbating the alienation of Tibetans, even young ones, intensifying their feelings of ethnic hatred and political hopelessness, and inculcating the idea that Tibetans cannot have their nationalistic aspirations met as part of the People's Republic of China. Some latent sentiment remains, therefore, that the long-term interests of China would be best served by returning to a more ethnically sensitive Tibet policy. Consequently, if a new, stable leadership emerges in Beijing, it might be interested in reviving talks should the proper signals be received from the Dalai Lama. Settling the Tibet Question would certainly represent a historic victory for any Chinese leader. It is, therefore, not too late for a breakthrough, but the Dalai Lama will have to make the first move. Right now the hard-liners on Tibet are in control, and they will remain so unless something gives the more moderate elements in Beijing and Lhasa new leverage. That new leverage can only be provided by the Dalai Lama.