But Beijing replies: ‘We must approve it’
The establishment of the Dalai Lama will continue and the “The recognition process” of a new maximum spiritual authority of Tibetan Buddhism “will be the exclusive competence of the members of the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama”, the only “to have the authority to recognize the future reincarnation”. The XIV Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, in today’s declaration, reiterated that “no one else has the same authority to interfere in this question”, excluding any role of Beijing. And the latter instead replies by stating that the successor of Dalai must be “approved by the Central Government” Chinese, as the spokesman for the Mao Ning Foreign Ministry said. “The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama and other great figures of Buddhism must be chosen for drawing by a golden urn and then approved by the central government,” added Mao.
The Dalai Lama provided the indications on the succession a few days after its 90th birthday, which falls on 6 July, from its exile in India, where she took refuge from the age of 23, since the popular army of liberation bent the armed revolt in Tibet against the communists of Mao Zedong in 1959 March (‘Voice for the Voiceless’) wrote that his successor will be born out of China, in the “free world”, when previously he said he could reincarnate out of Tibet, perhaps in India.
