China criticized British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday for meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, saying it amounts to support for Tibet’s independence from Chinese rule.

The British government ignored Beijing’s objections in going ahead with Monday’s meeting in London, and doing so “hurts the feelings of the Chinese people,” meddles in China’s affairs and harms Chinese-British relations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. He said Britain now needs to take actions to repair the damage.

“We are strongly discontented and firmly opposed to it,” Hong told reporters at a daily briefing. “We call on the British side to earnestly respond to China’s solemn demand, stop conniving at and supporting separatist attempts to achieve Tibetan independence, take practical measures to eliminate the terrible impact and take actions to preserve Chinese-British relations.”

Hong said his ministry lodged a protest with the British Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in London delivered the same message to the British government.

According to Reuters, China has responded similarly in the past to political leaders meeting with the Dalai Lama:

China’s response echoed many previous statements about the Dalai Lama’s meetings with foreign political leaders, suggesting that China will confine its reaction to angry words.

British ministers believe that who they see is a matter for them,” said a British Foreign Office spokeswoman in London. “If they choose to see someone, it does not necessarily indicate they support that individual’s viewpoint.”

The Dalai Lama told reporters on Monday that China is beset by a moral crisis, widespread corruption and lawlessness, leading millions of Chinese to seek solace in Buddhism.

He was in London to receive the $1.7 million Templeton prize for his work affirming the spiritual dimension of life.

This recent source of tension comes after China dismissed claims of plots to assassinate the Dalai Lama. AFP adds:

China has accused the Dalai Lama of “deceiving the world” and “spreading false information” after Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader said he was warned of a plot by Chinese agents to assassinate him.

The Buddhist monk made the allegation in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, saying he had been told that agents were planning to poison him using Tibetan women posing as devotees seeking his blessing.

“The Dalai Lama always engages in anti-China splittist activities globally wearing his religious cloak, spreading false information, deceiving the world and confusing the public,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

“His most recent statement is not even worth refuting,” he told reporters Monday.

Read more about the Dalai Lama and Tibet Protests via CDT.

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On Saturday, the state-run news media sought to equate the Dalai Lama, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, with the Nazis and their genocidal war on European Jews.

“The remarks of the Dalai Lama remind us of the cruel Nazis during the Second World War,” it said, adding, “How similar it is to the Holocaust committed by Hitler on the Jews!”

It also called him a “tricky liar skilled in double-dealing.”

The comments referred to past statements in which the Dalai Lama condemned policies that encouraged Han Chinese migration to Tibetan areas and others that favored Chinese-language instruction over Tibetan in predominately Tibetan schools.

The commentary continued to claim that the Dalai Lama is trying divide China, but the Dalai Lama has claimed that his goal is more autonomy within China. The Guardian adds:

An official of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharmsala, India, said the Dalai Lama had stated that he did not support self-immolation. “We are concerned about China shifting the blame on the Dalai Lama, making him the scapegoat, rather than correcting their own repressive policies,” said Dicki Choyang, minister of the exile government’s Department of Information and International Affairs.

One activist group, the London-based Free Tibet, released a video on Friday of one of the most recent self-immolations, showing the death of Sonam Thargyal, a 44-year-old farmer who doused himself with kerosene before setting himself alight earlier this month.

Dicki Choyang, of the exiled government, said China’s description of the population proposal was “totally misleading”. The proposal “never suggested removing established communities but advised preventing a massive transfer in the future”, she said.

Read more about the Tibet protests and the Dalai Lama via CDT.

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Sangay came to power in what might be the most critical moment for Tibet in a generation: A wave of Tibetans have burned themselves alive to protest Chinese rule, Beijing is undergoing a leadership transition and the 76-year-old Dalai Lama is speaking openly of his eventual death.

“Tibet is in crisis,” said Youdong Aukatsang, a New Delhi-based member of the exile parliament. “But this is also a historic moment for us, with His Holiness deciding to give up his political position. Lobsang Sangay symbolizes this turning point.”

Exile politics, long a genteel arena that plodded along in the Dalai Lama’s shadow, has never seen anything like Sangay.

“Tibetans normally want their leaders to be dignified and distant. Lobsang Sangay went to the people,” said Tsering Shakya, a scholar of modern Tibet at the University of British Columbia.

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The former monk, Norbu Damdrul, was the eighth monk or former monk to set himself on fire to protest China since March. All the self-immolations have taken place in Tibetan areas of Sichuan Province that lie in the remote region Tibetans call Amdo. At least four Tibetans have killed themselves in the wave of self-immolations, which scholars of modern Tibet say are a new and startling protest strategy by monks.

The attempt at self-immolation by Norbu was the seventh one this year in the town of Aba, called Ngaba by Tibetans. All of them have involved monks from Kirti Monastery, an institution that was a rallying point during the widespread Tibetan uprising in 2008.

Reports by advocacy groups say at least 10 Tibetans were killed by security forces during protests in Aba that spring. Many of the bodies were brought into Kirti, where monks took digital photographs of the corpses and transmitted them to people outside China. The photographs have been shown to foreign reporters visiting Kirti’s sister monastery in Dharamsala, India, the seat of power of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader.

Since the 2008 uprising, tension has built around Kirti Monastery, and at least 300 monks were taken away by security forces one night this April. They were sent to undergo “patriotic re-education,” according to reports by Tibetan groups, and many have not returned.

Also reported today, a nun has died from self-immolation, the first woman to do so. From VOA:

A Tibetan woman has killed herself by self-immolation three kilometers outside Ngaba County of eastern Tibet (Chinese: Aba County, Aba Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province) on Monday around 1PM local time, said Tibetan exile sources with contacts in the area.

Tenzin Wangmo, the 20-year-old nun of Mame Dechen Chokorling nunnery (also known as Mame nunnery), called for the return of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and freedom for Tibet when she set herself on fire. She is reported to have died at the scene. The nun was from Nyitse family of Shakoma village in Ngaba.

(Listen to the report here)

Read more about self-immolations via CDT, including a recent report: “News of Tibetan Self-Immolation Incidents Censored Online“

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C Raja Mohan: At a time when China is getting stronger, your talks with them have broken down. China is putting pressure on most governments in the world to stop their interaction with His Holiness. Has negotiating with them become more difficult as China grows stronger? How do you see the prospect of engaging the Chinese?

Lobsang Sangay: Number one: for India and Indian people, China is new. As Tibetans, we don’t look at China and the Chinese people that way. We are genetically disposed to dealing with China as we have been next to each other for the last 2,000 years. They have invaded us, we have invaded them, sometimes we have chased them out, and sometimes we have settled issues amicably, sometimes violently. We have seen ups and downs. When China invaded Tibet, the 13th Dalai Lama fled to India, to Kalimpong. We fought hard and were successful in making the return of His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama to Tibet possible. So we have done it before and we are confident that we will do it again.

Second is Buddhist philosophy. We believe our identity is based on Buddhist philosophy, which is 2,000-plus years old while Communism is just 100 years old. We know we will live through it and we will return to Tibet and restore freedom. At the moment, there is this tunnel vision in seeing China as a great military power and a growing economic power. At the moment, they call me names and call me illegal. But I am the democratically elected leader, hence legal. It is tough at the moment but in the long run, we will prevail. [...]

Amitabh Sinha: There’s one viewpoint that in recent years, the Dalai Lama was becoming more of a problem in initiating a dialogue with China than a solution. Do you think that will change with your appointment?

Lobsang Sangay: When you say Dalai Lama is more of a problem, it’s a narrative and you have to look at the source of the narrative, which is clearly Beijing. Why is Dalai Lama the source of the problem? He has advocated peace, non-violence, moderation, autonomy within China. So what is the problem? The problem is Beijing’s hardline attitude. I will continue the same middle-way policy—I ran my election on that and people voted for me supporting that policy. I am familiar with Chinese propaganda and how the system works. It’s all scripted—Dalai Lama was the problem and hence they were not talking to us. Now if they want to change the script and say Lobsang Sangay is the solution, then I will be happy to facilitate a dialogue because I have said this over and over again: we are willing to negotiate with the Chinese government anytime, anywhere. I have a 16-year track record to prove it. When I didn’t have to, I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of Chinese scholars at Harvard University. We are sincere, we believe in dialogue.

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The official Xinhua News Agency said Zhang Qingli, the region’s highest-ranking official, is being moved to another position which it did not identify. It said he will be replaced by Chen Quanguo, a longtime party official in the eastern province of Henan who last served as governor of Hebei province surrounding Beijing.

Like all of Tibet’s party chiefs, Chen is not Tibetan but a member of China’s majority Han ethnic group.

No reason was given for the move, although Zhang has served five years in the position, roughly the standard term for provincial officials.

China’s policies for Tibet are set at the highest levels in Beijing and there is no reason to believe the move heralds any major change.

Read more about Zhang Qingli via CDT.

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The footage shows that Xi delivered his speech from a viewing platform erected in a vast new square in front of the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama’s former residence in Lhasa. Banners above the stage show that the speech was part of the ceremonies marking what China calls “the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Tibet,” a reference to China’s assumption of sovereignty over Tibet in 1951 following its invasion a year earlier. There are frequent shots of the audience in the square, which included, according to the official Chinese media, “more than 20,000 Tibetans of all walks of life.”

But the footage does not support this claim. For one thing, only two monks are shown among the 20,000 people in the audience—one of them is shown repeatedly—suggesting that Tibetans from a “walk of life” that is integral to Tibetan society were not invited. As for women, there are many in the audience, but among the 200 or so senior Chinese and Tibetan officials who are shown seated on the viewing platform, all but five are men.

[...] Some aspects of these events cannot be seen from the television footage alone; one has to be there on the ground. After the ceremony in 2005, we were all allowed out on the streets once the formal events had ended, and so I went to the Post Office, near the exit of the square, and joined a vast crowd of curious Tibetans to watch the participants as they left. But what we saw coming out of the square had not been visible on the television screen: hundreds of armed troops followed by armored personnel carriers, riot control vehicles, water-cannon trucks, barbed-wire laying machines, vehicles with gun turrets and other forms of military hardware.

The military vehicles and the troops were not visible in the footage of the ceremony this year either, but they were surely there again. Perhaps there is an underlying view that all Tibetans are rebels thirsting for a war. If so, it would explain why the head of China’s army had been sent to sit next to Xi Jinping on the stage during the ceremony. It would also explain why there were no chairs: presumably they are seen as potential weapons in the hands of imagined Tibetan rioters, more threatening than plastic stools.

Everyone can understand why China is proud of improving Tibetan infrastructure and wants to maintain its rule over Tibet, but it is not clear why its leaders, or even ordinary Chinese, expect forcing Tibetans to stage rituals of mass gratitude to Xi Jinping and the Chinese government not to fuel resentment. In any event, resentment seems to be spreading among Tibetans: last week on August 15 another Tibetan burnt himself to death, others say they have been tortured after staging minor protests, at least three of the 13 Tibetan areas in China remain closed to foreigners, and the state’s officially selected Panchen Lama cannot visit a monastery without a major security operation to prevent unrest.

Watch Xi’s full speech in English here:

Read more about Beijing’s officially-selected Panchen Lama’s trip through Tibetan regions, via Bloomberg.

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The Karmapa’s aides said they planned to use the money to buy land for a monastery in India. But the Indian media fanned rumors that he was a Chinese spy.

To Tibetans and to scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, the notion is absurd. The Karmapa fled Tibet when he was 14, climbing out a window of his monastery to a waiting car, avoiding military checkpoints and riding a horse through the Nepalese outback to reach India. The escape was reminiscent of the Dalai Lama’s dash over the icy passes of the Himalayas in 1959.

But the rumors about the 17th Karmapa persisted in part because the Chinese government has recognized him as the legitimate leader of the Kagyu tradition, and avoided denouncing him even after his flight to India. That is in marked contrast to the Chinese denunciations of the Dalai Lama as a “splittist.”

This puts the Karmapa in a singular position, said Robert J. Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University.

“The Karmapa is perfectly placed to be someone who could broker a solution in the future,” Mr. Barnett said. “This is one of the rather rare issues where exiles and those in Tibet are in agreement. They have very wide respect for the Karmapa.”

Read more about the Karmapa and about Tibetan Buddhism via CDT.

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China accused the United States on Sunday of “grossly” interfering in its internal affairs and seriously damaging relations after President Barack Obama met exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House.

Obama met the Nobel Prize laureate for 45 minutes, praising him for embracing non-violence while reiterating that the United States did not support independence for Tibet.

China, which accuses the Dalai Lama of being a separatist who supports the use of violence to set up an independent Tibet, reacted swiftly, saying Obama’s meeting had had a “baneful” impact, and summoning a senior U.S. diplomat in Beijing.

“This action is a gross interference in China’s internal affairs, hurts the feelings of the Chinese people and damages Sino-U.S. relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement released in the early hours of Sunday.

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Tashi Rabten, an editor of banned magazine Eastern Snow Mountain, was sentenced on June 2 by a court in Aba prefecture, a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan province next to the Tibet Autonomous Region proper, said the International Campaign for Tibet, a London-based group critical of Chinese policies.

China’s ruling Communist Party has faced persistent unrest in Tibetan regions of the country’s west, where many residents chafe at the government’s controls on their Buddhist religion and resent the growing presence of ethnic Han Chinese people.

The banned journal “was the first published Tibetan language commentary about the protests and crackdown from 2008 onwards, offering a critical perspective reflecting a prevailing sense of despair and loss, but also a way forward,” said an statement from the group issued late on Friday.

The statement did not say what charge Tashi Rabten was jailed for. But three other Tibetans who worked for the journal were jailed last year on charges of inciting separatism, an accusation that the ruling Communist Party often levels at Tibetans campaigning for self-determination for their homeland.

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