Opinion | Dalai Lama succession could spiral into next U.S.-China flash point - The Washington Post

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/13/tibet-china-dalai-lama-succession/

Choosing the next Dalai Lama is surprisingly dangerous

Renewed political instability in Tibet could well spiral into the next U.S.-China flash point.

Nolan Peterson is a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Alexander Noyes is a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

China is increasingly meddling in the process of choosing the next Dalai Lama, attempting to handpick a successor for the Tibetan Buddhist leader who turned 90 in July. These machinations are likely to backfire, possibly sparking a renewed popular resistance in Tibet that could lead to large-scale violence. America should act quickly and decisively to push China to respect the long-standing Tibetan traditions of spiritual leadership succession. Doing so will help deter conflict in other potential flash points in the region, including Taiwan.

America has long supported Tibet, dating back to assistance provided after the Chinese invasion in 1950. The Dalai Lama, then only 24, escaped to India in 1959 and established a government in exile. Until the early 1970s, a CIA-backed insurgency waged a guerrilla war against China from Tibet and bases in Nepal. In 1979, the Dalai Lama chose autonomy over independence. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and this “middle way” has held, and largely maintained peace, for nearly four decades.

That could all change soon. While most Tibetans inside and out of Tibet profess support for the Dalai Lama’s middle way, there is a divide over whether to begin pursuing more aggressive, perhaps even violent, modes of resistance. The debate centers on whether the Tibetan government in exile should continue pushing for autonomy, as the Dalai Lama has advocated, or push for full-fledged independence. There is a mounting resistance movement inside Tibet against Chinese rule, evidenced by large-scale protests in 2008 and a wave of self-immolations since. During the 2008 protests, Tibetans sacked Chinese-owned businesses and attacked Han Chinese people on the streets, underscoring simmering ethnic tensions.

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China has a long history of repression in Tibet and cracked down extremely harshly after the protests. Today, Tibet remains a nightmarish Gestapo state. It is illegal for Tibetans to possess a photograph or likeness of the Dalai Lama. And, apart from imposing intrusive surveillance measures and onerous travel restrictions for Tibetans, Chinese authorities have also forced about 1 million Tibetan students into colonial boarding schools. Separated from their families for years, these young Tibetans are forced to speak and study in Chinese and are indoctrinated into Communist Party dogma.

For 75 years, the CCP has used practically every lever of coercive military and police-state power to defeat Tibetans’ will to resist. Yet China’s repressive actions might backfire. Tibetans, a people once divided by regional dialects and cultures, have now coalesced around a single version of their language and national identity, at the heart of which is religious devotion to the Dalai Lama. Despite China’s best efforts, the Tibetan nation’s spirit of resistance remains unbroken.

“Our objective is the same as 1959. We are still fighting for our freedom and to return to our motherland,” said Sonam Topgyal Khorlatsang, director general of the Dokham Chushi Gangdruk, a successor organization to Tibet’s Cold War resistance that focuses on welfare projects for refugees.

In 2007, China implemented a new law requiring all “reincarnations” of the Dalai Lama to secure government approval. A visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in August upped the ante, showing that Tibet remains important to Beijing.

Even so, many Tibetans believe their nation will regain its freedom. And while Beijing expects the Tibetan resistance to die with the Dalai Lama, the trauma of his passing — and Chinese meddling in how to choose his successor — could bring Tibetans’ dreams of independence into the daylight. Although many Tibetans disagree with the Dalai Lama’s middle way, they’re not likely to defy their spiritual leader while he’s alive.

In Beijing’s view, the elimination of Tibet’s national identity remains a nonnegotiable step in the long march toward consolidating imperial glory. That was declared on New Year’s Day 1950, several months after the Communists assumed power, when Radio Peking declared the CCP’s goals for the year were to “liberate” Hainan, Tibet and Taiwan.

Tibet is fast approaching a decisive moment, one that demands U.S. attention and action. The Dalai Lama’s death will be a traumatic event for Tibetans, both in Tibet and in exile. It will shatter the status quo that has held since the 1980s. The United States and other like-minded countries would be wise to firmly push China to respect Tibet’s traditions of reincarnation and succession. But they should also demand that China respect Tibet’s autonomy and reverse its campaign of repression.

Doing so will be key to preventing renewed political instability in Tibet that could well spiral into the next U.S.-China flash point. By strongly standing up to Beijing on Tibet, the U.S. can perhaps make Xi think twice before deciding to make good on the Communist Party’s 75-year-old goal of conquering Taiwan.

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