WHY IS THE CCP SO OBSESSED WITH “CONTROLLING” THE NEXT DALAI LAMA?

This year, the 14th Dalai Lama celebrates his 91st birthday. At last year’s 90th birthday celebrations, during the opening ceremony of an important religious conference held in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama spoke via video and once again made clear: “The institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” and “no one has the right to interfere in this matter.”

These words sounded calm, yet nearly every one of them was directed squarely at Beijing.

For it is the Chinese Communist Party — and only the CCP — that has spent decades attempting to intervene in, and even seize control of, the Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation system.

In fact, Beijing has been laying the groundwork on the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation for many years. Through law, propaganda, historical research, ideological remodeling, religious control, and the shaping of international opinion, the CCP is attempting to accomplish something entirely unprecedented: enabling an avowedly atheist communist regime to claim the authority to determine the “reincarnated soul” of Tibetan Buddhism’s highest spiritual leader.

Read more