The new regulations introduced by Beijing, entitled: ‘Management Measures for the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism’ (Chin: Zangchuan fojiao huofo zhuanshi guanli banfa), have raised considerable concerns amongst western media, Tibet support groups, Tibetan exile authorities and, not least, a large majority of Tibetans. In terms of content, the measures merely ratify a status quo that has been imposed throughout Tibetan regions since the early 1990s in order to assert control over Buddhist reincarnations (Tib: tulku; Chin: huofo - literally ‘living Buddha’), who represent lineages of Tibetan religious teachers. Thus their introduction primarily reflects Beijing’s drive to streamline its regulatory system, unify local laws and replace them directly under central supervision. It also highlights the Chinese authorities’ continuing efforts to harness for their own purposes deep-rooted Tibetan beliefs that they perceive to be undermining their absolute claim for power. The ongoing endeavour has so far consistently failed yet remains a source of contention at the core of dissent and repression in contemporary Tibet.

The brief ‘Management Measures for the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism’ (MMR)(2) were approved by the People's Republic of China’s (PRC) State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA) on 13 July 2007 and took effect from 01 September 2007. They describe in 14 articles the administrative framework that regulates the process of identifying reincarnated lamas, including:

• whether or not the search for a new reincarnation may begin;
• the way in which the search is to be conducted;
• the procedure for the actual recognition of any reincarnation;
• how to obtain government approval for the recognition.

According to a SARA official, any Tibetan reincarnation that fails to get this approval would be considered “illegal or invalid”, though the MMR themselves avoid explicit reference to this(3). The MMR also deal with the enthronement, education and religious training of a reincarnation. The new regulations institutionalise the authority of governmental (the central SARA and its branches at lower administrative levels) and state-sponsored religious bodies, such as the Chinese Buddhist Association, and assume state control over the whole selection process. As such, they clearly interfere with the traditional Tibetan procedures. The controversy between the Chinese authorities and Tibetan Buddhists on the legitimacy of new reincarnations was ignited in 1995 with the identification of the 11th Panchen Lama. The Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in Dharamsala has described the new document as “ludicrous and unwarranted” and “an attempt to further repress and undermine the religious culture of Tibet”.

A long-standing issue

Drawing lots from the 'Golden Urn' for chosing China's Panchen Lama.

Beijing claims a historical legitimacy for seeking to assert control over the identification of new reincarnations, and the procedure of ‘drawing lots from a golden urn’ (Chin: jinping che qian, Tib: gser bum skrug pa) is a recurrent motif in Chinese propaganda and academic publications. It was laid down in one of the 29 articles of the ‘Authorised Regulations for the Better Governing of Tibet’, established in 1793 by the Qing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735-1795) at the peak of the Manchu-Chinese influence in Central Tibet. It was however rarely used in the following years as the Qing Dynasty’s authority declined(4). The Emperor could justify the introduction of the procedure as an attempt at eradicating disputes and corruption in the selection process. His role was essentially that of a mediator acting in his capacity as a patron of Tibetan Buddhism, a religion he was himself a follower of. The atheist Beijing government today uses this 18th century measure as a basis for their claims of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, and the MMR (specifically Article. 8) assert that it is the standard procedure for identifying new, high reincarnations like the Panchen Lama and Dalai Lama. The ceremony of ‘drawing lots from a golden urn’ was staged, with great fanfare in Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple as part of the process Beijing used to identify its candidate for the role of Panchen Lama in November 1995. Whether the results of the lottery process are observed or whether it serves merely as a coronation ceremony for a pre-selected candidate is unknown.

The modern pattern for approaching religion and Tibet was established by the Guomindang Nationalist government. In 1936, their Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission introduced ‘Measures for the Reincarnations of Living Buddhas’ (Chin: Huofo zhuanshi banfa), an act designed to assert China’s sovereignty over Tibet, although it had little effect. Like the recent MMR, this document described in detail the search, identification and recognition procedures for reincarnations while referring to the ‘golden urn’ as the sole legitimate procedure for selecting important lineages of both Tibetan and Mongolian reincarnations. It also categorised reincarnations into various groups according to their status in society and claimed that the whole process should be supervised by the government of the Republic of China who, as the text already claimed at the time, held the authority on all issues related to new reincarnations in Tibetan and Mongolian areas. In reality, the only enthronement of a high reincarnation ever supervised by the Republican Chinese government, shortly before its fall, was that of the 10th Panchen Lama. This took place in Kumbum Monastery (in Amdo/Qinghai) in August 1949, but the process took place without the ‘golden urn procedure’. Following a dispute with the Tibetan government, the preceding 9th Panchen Lama had fled to China in 1923 where he died in 1937. This provided the Chinese government (despite protests from Lhasa) with an otherwise un-hoped for opportunity to control the selection of the next reincarnation.

After the incorporation of Tibet into the PRC in 1951, Beijing provided vague guarantees in the 17-Point Agreement that it would “not alter the established status, functions and powers” of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama; their legal status, like that of other high reincarnations, was not directly addressed in any known laws or regulations. Later however, in particular during the ‘Democratic Reform of the Religious System’ (Chin: zongjiao zhidu minzhu gaige) in the late 1950s, the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, and traditional Tibetan society as a whole, went through dramatic changes. Most reincarnations were purged and remained imprisoned for many years, and the lineages of most religious teachers were disrupted.

The issue of the role and selection of reincarnations re-emerged during the religious revival that swept through Tibet in the late 1980s. Although the issue of their identification received wider attention in western media only in regard to the enthronement of the 17th Karmapa Ugyen Thinle Dorje in July 1992, and the controversy surrounding the selection of the 11th Panchen Lama in 1995, other local reincarnations have been identified and enthroned since 1990 without causing serious tensions between the authorities and the local Tibetan population(5). These local reincarnations have played an important and ongoing role in the revival of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in rural areas.

Ratifying the status quo

The 7th Gungthang Rinpoche

Until the recently approved MMR, there were no publicly promulgated and formally established regulations on reincarnations. Instead, internal directives, drafted by governmental (Religious Affairs Bureaux) and Party (United Front departments) bodies, dealt in great detail with the process of selection, identification and enthronement of reincarnations(6). These documents were never officially disclosed and did not have any legal status comparable with the MMR, but they effectively governed Chinese practices from the early 1990s onwards. The principles behind these documents, which have been implemented for many years, are identical to those in the current MMR – hence the MMR simply ratify the status quo, and any nuances within them are cosmetic.

• While the old guidelines claimed that the whole process of recognising and installing reincarnations should be conducted under the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this point is not openly stated in the MMR. This probably reflects the current Chinese drive to formally shift executive functions that were hitherto directly controlled by the Party to the state executive. (As the Party is effectively in full control of the state executive however, this drive does not substantially reduce the power of the Party in practical terms)
• The MMR describe in great detail the principle of non-interference of foreign organisations or individuals (Article 2), while the former internal directives more bluntly stated that the aim is to completely eliminate the influence of the Dalai Lama and Tibetans in exile(7).
• Governmental agencies (mainly the State Administration for Religious Affairs and its provincial branches) have already been maintaining a register of the reincarnations that are ‘allowed’ to be reincarnated. A dull and highly detailed set of bureaucratic regulations outlined which applications for the search of a new reincarnation were to be approved and how the subsequent identification process was to go ahead. As is the case in the MMR (Article 5), and the Guomindang regulation of 1936, these internal directives categorised the various lineages of reincarnations according to their influence in Tibetan society (at local, provincial, and all-Tibetan level) and designated the particular administrative bodies in the hierarchy of the Religious Affairs Bureaux to hold the authority for the approval(8). According to these guidelines, the final decision on the most important reincarnations (i.e., Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama) lay in the hands of the State Council, the PRC’s highest executive body.

In sum, the brief text of the MMR does not represent any substantial change in the administration of the process of selection, identification and enthronement of reincarnations in Tibet. The high degree of interference of government bodies into this primarily religious matter has been established practice since the very beginning of the revival of Buddhism in the early 1990s.

MMR and ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’

The measures now summarised in the MMR and made public in the form of an order issued by the SARA were incorporated into the ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’ adopted by the State Council on 07 July 2004, which took effect on 01 March 2005. The ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’ provide a general administrative and legal framework for state sanctioned religions in China. They deal with such topics as religious bodies, sites for religious activities, religious personnel, religious property and legal liability from a general point of view, but do not provide detailed procedures and measures for matters related to individual religious traditions. The only reference to Tibetan Buddhism is in Article 27 and states, with regard to reincarnations: “The succession of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism shall be conducted under the guidance of Buddhist bodies and in accordance with the religious rites and rituals and historical conventions and be reported for approval to the religious affairs department of the people’s government”. The recently approved MMR complement the ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’ with a detailed procedure for this process. They also deal with the role of Buddhist bodies (i.e. the provincial branches of the (state-sponsored) Chinese Buddhist Association) that should be responsible for administration at the local level. Decision making, however, still rests in the hands of the government officials in charge of religious affairs. Some parts of the MMR repeat the exact wording of the ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, for instance the reference to social harmony, which hints at the concept of harmonious society (Chin. hexie shehui) that has been promoted by President Hu Jintao since 2005.

After promulgation of the ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’, various documents were drafted to deal in detail with issues related to different religions. However, while measures for Protestant churches and Islam (approved in summer 2006) were drafted by the ‘Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee’ of the Protestant Churches in China and the Chinese Islamic Association respectively, i.e. by religious bodies, the MMR were approved directly by the SARA, which is the central government organ in charge. This underlines the special attention Chinese authorities give to Tibetan Buddhism in general, and to the issue of reincarnations in particular(9).

Rearing patriotic reincarnations – “A crucial task of Tibet policy”

All official PRC documents clearly state that the control of the process of search, identification, recognition and education of reincarnations is crucial to its Tibet policy. After the publication of the MMR, most commentators interpreted the new measures in relation to the search, at some point in the future, for a 15th Dalai Lama. While this is definitely a major issue, as well as a crucial one for the future of Tibetan communities both in the PRC and in exile, the implications of the MMR reach beyond that.

In Tibetan society, local reincarnations play a crucial religious and social role in their communities. Well aware of the traditional authority they enjoy within both monastic and lay communities, the Chinese state has placed these Buddhist hierarchies at the centre of its religious policy in Tibet. Consequently, the education of these young Tibetans has been a focal point of the authorities’ attention for several decades. The importance of preventing them from coming under the influence of Tibetan exile institutions has been constantly stressed. To this end, a network of provincial Buddhist Institutes (Chin: foxueyuan) was established in the 1980s and, in 1987, the late 10th Panchen Lama founded the Beijing Institute of Higher Buddhist Studies (Chin: Beijing gaoji foxueyuan), the highest state-sponsored educational institution for Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations, as well as for monks. These institutions provide a high-level education in Buddhist studies but alongside this the state strives to gain the loyalty of influential religious figures and their allegiance to the Party. The ideological criteria listed in Article 2 of the MMR (“Respect and protection of the unity of the state, unity of minorities”) reflect the political profile that is expected from students.

From the perspective of the PRC government, the reincarnations represent crucial ‘middlemen’ between the Chinese state and the Tibetan people. Many have therefore been installed in various bodies such as the People’s Congress (PC), the People’s Political Consultative Conference (PPCC), and Buddhist Associations at central, provincial and prefectural levels. Their positions within these bodies showcase the state’s supposed preferential treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in general and respect towards traditional Tibetan hierarchies in particular, however, politically they invariably provide them with little more than a rubber-stamping function. At the same time, the state authorities strive to exploit the charisma of reincarnations in order to legitimise central government policies in Tibetan areas and to pursue their political aims. The Chinese authorities recognise the pivotal role of Buddhist reincarnations at all levels of Tibetan society and it is this recognition that seems to compel the state to control them, and even the process of their selection.

After the announcement of the MMR, a SARA official stated: “The government only administrates religious affairs related to state and public interests and will not interfere in pure internal religious affairs” (Xinhua, 4 August 2007). This statement and the stipulations contained within the MMR however, imply that the selection of a new incarnation is primarily a state affair, apparently because the sacred status which Tibetans attach to reincarnations impart them an authority which must be controlled by a system that considers its own authority to be absolute. The future will show whether the actual implementation of the MMR leaves enough space to accommodate both the expectations of Tibetan Buddhists and those of the Chinese authorities. So far, however, all attempts by the Chinese state to impose their authority on higher reincarnations, and thus on Tibetans at large, such as in the case of the Karmapa and of the Panchen Lama, have unquestionably failed.

Notes:
1: This title is derived from the Chinese saying 'to pierce one's shield with one's own spear' (Chin: Yi zi zhi mao gong zi zhi dun), which means to use someone’s own weapons against himself. In the context of this Update, it illustrates Beijing’s efforts to control the Tibetan core institution of reincarnations in order to stifle Tibetan restiveness.
2: For the Chinese text of MMR see http://www.sara.gov.cn/GB//zcfg/89522ff7-409d-11dc-bafe-93180af1bb1a.html. For an English translation see http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=1159.
3: For a further discussion of this issue, see http://www.cecc.gov/pages/virtualAcad/index.phpd#id98716.
4: The procedure is however occasionally mentioned in historical texts. For instance, the biography of the 9th Panchen Lama states that it was used for his selection.
5: See the TibetInfoNet Update “Grooming a ‘Patriotic’ religious leader – Seventh Gungthang Rinpoche to be enthroned” (30 September 2006) for a description of the circumstances related to the enthronement of a local reincarnation.
6: E.g., Zangchuan fojiao aiguozhuyi jiaoyu xuexi xuanchuan cailiao (Propaganda Materials for Education and Study in Patriotism in Tibetan Buddhism). Lanzhou 1998, pp. 193-199.
7: “[The revival of the process of identification of new reincarnations in 1991] …was particularly endorsed by the religious circles and the masses of believers as the identification of a new reincarnation fulfilled expectations of a certain group of believers, thus effectively reducing the political plots of the Dalai clique in Tibetan areas related to the identification of tulkus, and striking at the purpose of the Dalai clique to exploit the identification of tulkus for conspiratorial activities aimed at splitting the motherland” (Zangchuan fojiao aiguozhuyi jiaoyu xuexi xuanchuan cailiao (Propaganda Materials for Education and Study in Patriotism in Tibetan Buddhism). Lanzhou 1998, p. 194).
8: These instructions also dealt with the social background of the future reincarnations and explicitly warned that new reincarnations should not be searched for amongst children of Party cadres on county and higher administrative levels and children of public officials at town and higher administrative levels.
9: In September 2006, the TAR People’s Government already drafted provisional measures for the implementation of the ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’ that took effect on 01 January 2007. It is another attempt to tailor a detailed administrative and legal framework for a given religion in accordance with the ‘Religious Affairs Regulations’. These measures deal also with the issue of reincarnations (Articles 36 – 40). For an English translation see the recently published report by the International Campaign for Tibet, The Communist Party as Living Buddha. The Crisis Facing Tibetan Religion under Chinese Control. Washington – Berlin 2007, pp. 89-98. With promulgation of the recent MMR, these TAR specific measures should have now become obsolete.