By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-29 12:16:33 | Updated at 2025-03-31 23:51:53
2 days ago
Beijing will not recognise the Dalai Lama’s proposal for a foreign successor and will deal with reincarnation according to Chinese law, according to an official scholar on Tibetan Buddhism.
“If the next Dalai Lama is declared to have been reincarnated abroad, I think it is illegal,” Li Decheng, deputy director general of the official China Tibetology Research Centre, told a forum in Beijing on Thursday.
Li said that the concept of a foreign successor to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader “does not conform to religious rituals, historical customs or China’s management methods for the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhism’s living Buddhas”.
“He cannot be recognised,” Li added.
The forum, organised by the All-China Journalists Association and open to reporters and diplomats, was held to explain the reincarnation system of Tibetan Buddhism’s living Buddhas.
In a book published earlier this month, the Dalai Lama unnerved Beijing by saying that he would be reincarnated as a child born outside China.
