The Dalai Lama is planning his succession as the ultimate protest against Beijing

Days before he turned 90 last week the Dalai Lama hurled a rhetorical hand grenade at the Chinese Communist Party. Having devoted almost the entirety of his life striving to preserve the imperiled culture and identity of Tibet — invaded and annexed by China in 1950 — the world’s most famous Buddhist monk finally confirmed that his successor will be chosen by a conclave comprising his most trusted followers. 

The search for the next Dalai Lama will not fully break from tradition, a process in which high-ranking lamas rely on dreams, divinations and whispers of oracles to locate the “reincarnation” of their deceased leader.

But it will still be radically novel because, as the Dalai Lama has previously stated, his successor will have to be found in the “free world” — outside Tibet, where he has historically been found — to avoid Chinese control.

To understand the significance of this, consider the plight of Tibet under Chinese rule.

For 75 years, Beijing has exposed the 6 million Buddhist inhabitants of that hypnotically beautiful plateau to unimaginable tragedy. Tibet today is the world’s largest colony. China has strip-mined its natural wealth, dammed its rivers and herded Tibetans into what it calls “New Socialist Villages” — sterile apartment blocks designed to desiccate their ways of life.

It has coerced kids as young as 4 into state-run boarding schools to be intensively “Sinicized”; when they come out, the children, bereft of a common language, are strangers to their own families.

Despite deploying brute force, China has so far failed to eradicate the Tibetan identity. The reason for this is the Dalai Lama, the supreme leader of the Tibetan people. Beijing has been patiently waiting for him to die so that it can appoint a puppet as his successor. Chinese authorities have meddled before in Tibetan spiritual succession before.

In 1995, it disappeared without trace a 6-year-old boy identified as the Panchen Lama — second only to the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan pantheon — and replaced him with its minion. His whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

The CCP, desperate to control the hearts and minds of Tibetans, has long wanted to do the same with the next Dalai Lama. Its plans have been upended, for now, by the Dalai Lama’s announcement.

But is this enough to stop China from annihilating what remains of Tibet’s cultural, religious and linguistic heritage?

The history of Chinese behavior does not encourage optimism. Since 1959, when he fled to India with US assistance, the Dalai Lama has unrelentingly championed his country’s freedom from Chinese colonialism.

He has been branded a “terrorist” by Beijing despite his unwavering commitment to nonviolence. In 1988, he even downgraded the demand for Tibetan independence to autonomy within China. 

Beijing’s response? It turned Tibet, alongside Xinjiang, into the most policed region under its rule. Hundreds of Tibetans, abjuring violence, have set their own bodies on fire to rouse the world. Their sacrifices have barely registered globally.

I have always wondered how the world might have reacted had they chosen violence instead — would commentators then debate the “root causes” of Tibetan unrest? Would protesters around the world march in solidarity with them?

The Dalai Lama’s global fame, peaking with his 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, diminished as the West’s dependency on China grew. But the delusional Washington consensus — that heightened trade with Beijing would lead to China’s political liberalization — has spectacularly backfired.

Today, it is Western authors who self-censor for the privilege of being published in China, Hollywood edits its films to please Beijing and consumers are addicted to cheap Chinese goods produced at the expense of jobs at home. Western politicians dodge the Dalai Lama and his people for fear of provoking China’s wrath.

Even India, home to more than 100,000 Tibetan refugees, has acted cravenly by refusing to endorse the Dalai Lama’s right to choose his successor.

Seen in the West as a democratic counterweight to authoritarian China, Delhi has a long tradition of locking up Tibetans whenever a Chinese dignitary visits. The deeply reverential attitude of ordinary Indians to His Holiness has so far deterred India from stamping on his followers. Their fate is chilling to contemplate once he is no more.

The Dalai Lama’s legacy is a paradox: he has kept Tibet’s cause alive while not being able to halt his homeland’s gradual destruction. This isn’t his failure; it’s an indictment of a world that rewards votaries of violence but derides pacifists.

Now, the United States has the opportunity to correct its past mistakes by standing up to China and unequivocally supporting Tibetan people’s right to choose their own leader. The alternative is a triumph for China built on the ashes of an ancient civilisation.