US lawmakers meet Tibet’s Dalai Lama in India, pressure China on talks

DHARAMSALA  –  A group of US lawmakers who met the Dalai Lama in India on June 19 said they would not allow China to influence the choice of his successor, comments expected to anger Beijing, which calls the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader a separatist.

The remarks come as Washington and Beijing seek to steady rocky ties while India pushes China to secure lasting peace on their disputed Himalayan frontier, four years after a military clash strained ties.

The lawmakers also signalled that Washington would pressure Beijing to hold talks with Tibetan leaders, stalled since 2010, to resolve the Tibet issue, with a Bill they said President Joe Biden would sign soon.

Although Washington recognises Tibet as a part of China, the Bill appears to question that position and any change would be a major shock to Beijing, analysts said.

The bipartisan group of seven, led by Representative Michael McCaul, of Texas, who also chairs the House foreign affairs committee, met the 88-year-old Nobel peace laureate at his monastery in the northern town of Dharamsala.

“It is still my hope that one day the Dalai Lama and his people will return to Tibet in peace,” Mr McCaul told a public reception after the meeting.

Beijing has even attempted to insert itself into choosing the successor of the Dalai Lama, he said, but added: “We will not let that happen.”

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet. Chinese officials chafe at any interaction he has with officials of other countries.

The question of the Dalai Lama’s successor has been a thorny issue, which analysts say highlights the power and influence of the role, fuelling Beijing’s tussle to control it.

Tibetan tradition holds that the Dalai Lama is reincarnated after his death, and the current leader has said his successor may be found in India.

Beijing has said the tradition must continue but its officially atheist communist leaders have the right to approve the successor, as a legacy inherited from China’s emperors.

Tibetans hail breakthrough

The US group, which includes former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, arrived on June 18 for a two-day visit.

Mrs Pelosi said congressional approval of the legislation, titled the “Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act”, or the Resolve Tibet Act, sent a message to China that Washington was clear in its thinking on the issue of Tibet.

“This Bill says to the Chinese government: Things have changed now, get ready for that,” she said to cheers from hundreds of Tibetans at the event on June 19.

Photographs on the Dalai Lama’s website showed him holding a framed copy of the Bill as the lawmakers stood alongside.

Beijing, which calls the Dalai Lama a dangerous “splittist” or separatist, has said it was seriously concerned about the Bill and the lawmakers’ visit, urging them not to contact what it calls the “Dalai clique” and Mr Biden not to sign the Bill.

The Indian Foreign Ministry offered no immediate comment on the lawmakers’ visit.

Ties between the Asian rivals have been strained over their long mountainous border since army clashes in 2020 killed 20 Indian and four Chinese troops.

At the same time, concerns about China’s growing might, among others, have nudged New Delhi and Washington closer in the last two decades.

While Chinese officials chafe at any interactions of the Dalai Lama with officials of other countries, Mr Biden has not met the Tibetan leader since taking office in 2021. The Dalai Lama is due to fly to the US this week for medical treatment, but it is not clear if he will have time for any engagements.

“Presidential assent for the Bill would be far more concerning for China than whether Biden or any other leader meets the Dalai Lama,” said Tibet specialist Robert Barnett of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Congressional approval of the Bill was a “significant breakthrough”, said Mr Penpa Tsering, the political leader of the exiled Tibetan government, who believed it would put pressure on Beijing to negotiate.

But the Dalai Lama has always sought “autonomy or a middle way, not independence” for Tibet, he added. REUTERS