Can China arm-twist Tibet issue like Taiwan? Expert says it's not so easy

As the Dalai Lama has announced the institution will continue after him, China is set to intensify efforts to delegitimise the Tibetan movement and arm-twist nations into toeing its line. China has the Taiwan template that it is expected to deploy.

At one point, around 100 countries recognised Taiwan, but most of them switched recognition to the People's Republic of China (PRC) over the years. Since 2019, five countries have switched recognition from Taiwan to PRC, leaving just a handful of countries that still recognise the self-ruled island.

The driver behind such a shift has been China's economic and military might. China has convinced the world that keeping economic and trade ties with it, and avoiding the wrath of its military aggression, is more important than recognising or engaging with Taiwan.

While Chinese economic leverage and strategic coercion are potent instruments of foreign policy, it is unlikely that the same tools will succeed in delegitimising the Dalai Lama or his reincarnation recognised in exile and securing widespread international legitimacy for a China-appointed Dalai Lama, according to Eerishika Pankaj, the Director of think tank Organisation for Research on China and Asia (ORCA).

More from World

ALSO READ: Why Dalai Lama’s reincarnation is a geopolitical tussle & not just about Tibet

China made it clear last week that it will not stay quiet in the matter of the Dalai Lama's succession. Even as India issued a very balanced statement, China warned India against any support to the Dalai Lama and said only China had the sole right to appoint the Dalai Lama.

Buying legitimacy in Dalai Lama-Tibet issue won't be easy

Pankaj says that that even though China has its economic and military might, the issue of Dalai Lama is not like Tibet as the issue does not rest on formal recognition by a government but by popular legitimacy.

There has already been a case of China appointing a senior Tibetan leader in parallel to the one named by the Dalai Lama.

In 1989, the 10th Panchen Lama —the second senior-most Lama in Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama— died and the Dalai Lama recognised a six-year-old Tibetan boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as the 11th Panchen Lama in 1995. Three days after the announcement, Chinese authorities abducted the boy and he has not been seen in public since. China later announced its own puppet Panchen Lama. No country has ever recognised the puppet.

Pankaj tells Firstpost, "Unlike Taiwan, where China's argument rests on sovereign territoriality, the spiritual and metaphysical legitimacy of the Dalai Lama transcends borders and temporal power. Reincarnation is inherently a matter of faith, lineage, and recognition by religious authorities. No amount of material inducement can substitute the sanctity that millions of Tibetans and global practitioners place in the Dalai Lama's spiritual legacy. Moreover, the Tibet issue does not hinge on formal diplomatic recognition like Taiwan. Instead, it operates in the space of transnational civil society, spiritual networks, and cultural affinity."

ALSO READ: China’s fabrication of lies on Panchen Lama

Except for countries in complete alignment with China across security and economic domains, Pankaj says most democratic countries are unlikely to recognise China-appointed Dalai Lama.

"China's influence may secure de jure acknowledgements in a few authoritarian and highly dependent states, but de facto legitimacy among the Tibetan community and global Buddhists will rest with the Dalai Lama identified by the Tibetan religious authorities in exile," says Pankaj.

The popularity and public adoration of the Dalai Lama in several countries would further make it hard for China to delegitimise the Dalai Lama and his reincarnation recognised by his followers in exile, says Pankaj.

With the announcement that the institution will continue after him, the Dalai Lama has weakened China's hand. For a long time, the Dalai Lama had floated the possibility that the institution could end with him and that would have denied China an opportunity to appoint its own Dalai Lama.

However, the continuation of the institution works against China, suggests Pankaj.

"Far from strengthening China’s hand, this announcement puts Beijing in a defensive posture. It will now be forced to justify its political manipulation of a religious process, a narrative that will be difficult to sanitize internationally. In the long arc of history and faith, legitimacy cannot be manufactured by state fiat—it must be believed in. And belief remains outside the realm of China’s coercive capacity," says Pankaj.