Reborn supremacy: China's control of Tibetan reincarnation

Reincarnation rarely overlaps with international security concerns. However, in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China, the topic has implications for the way Beijing rules the region.

Since invading the then-independent Tibet in 1950, Beijing has ensured tight military and political control over the strategically important area. Struggling against this control has been the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and last independent political leader of Tibet, the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, who was 15 when China invaded and in his early twenties when he fled the region to India in 1959. Now 72 years old, he and his Tibetan government-in-exile are concerned that his death and reincarnation (the present Dalai Lama is believed by Tibetan Buddhists to be the latest in an unbroken lineage of incarnations) will eliminate the possibility of political accommodation with China, given the Dalai Lama's role as the symbolic focus of the Tibetan issue.

For its part, Beijing similarly believes the Dalai Lama's demise will remove a figure of symbolic force and sap the movement of much of its international resonance. It is therefore seeking to, and believes it can, manage the Dalai Lama's death with alacrity and prevent any deterioration in security.

The issue of reincarnation was highlighted in November when the Dalai Lama announced during a visit to Japan that he might choose his successor while he is still alive. Although there are instances in Tibetan history where an incarnate Tibetan lama is believed by Tibetans to have reincarnated before his passing, the Dalai Lama's statement was still somewhat unusual, and certainly politically significant as an attempt to thwart Beijing's control and supervision of the reincarnation of influential Tibetan lamas.

However, despite the Dalai Lama's statement, the government-in-exile in Dharmsala remains undecided on the issue. A referendum on the concept of succession and a popular election for any successor have also been mentioned by the Dalai Lama in 2007. This hesitancy was underlined by further remarks in December, when the Dalai Lama also acknowledged that he and his exile government had come to no real decision about any specific method for managing the search for and recognition of the next dalai lama. This indecision highlights the difficult situation for the Tibetan government-in-exile, which has little influence in the TAR's politics, and the nimble diplomacy of Beijing.

China's intentions regarding its desire to select the next Dalai Lama have been known for more than a decade, long enough for the Tibetan leader and his exile government to have formulated a clear and decisive plan for the succession. That they still remain undecided about how specifically to counter China's plans at this late stage is symptomatic of the almost wholly reactive nature of their strategy towards China. China has long remained several steps ahead of them at almost every stage.

Playing on the Dalai Lama's political naivety and his desperation to resolve the Tibet issue, China acted to ensure that the idea of Tibetan independence lost some of its legitimacy by shrewdly insisting he be more vocal about accepting Tibet as a part of China. What ensued during the 1990s and into the present decade was effective statecraft. 523 Of 1,593 words