(TibetanReview.net, Feb03’26) – Beijing sees anti-China menace whenever and wherever the name “Dalai Lama” crops up, unless it is one which criticises him. And so, it exploded with anger when the global media reported on his winning on Feb 1 of a Grammy for his Meditations audiobook.
The exile spiritual leader of Tibet won the Grammy recognition for his audiobook Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama said he accepted the award with “gratitude and humility”, seeing it as “a recognition of our shared universal responsibility”.
But China would have none of it. It called the award atool for anti-China political manipulation.
“We firmly oppose relevant parties using art awards as a tool for anti-China political manipulation, and this position is consistent and clear,” bbc.com and other news outlets Feb 3 quoted China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian as saying a news conference in Beijing.
China’s trenchant hostility towards the Dalai Lama stems from the fact that he is not seeking independence but genuine autonomy, which is already largely guaranteed by its own constitution. This is because it makes it difficult for it to oppose, much less condemn, him. His stand presents a voice of reason and compromise which, however, interferes with China’s policy to Sinicize the occupied territory as some sort of a final solution. And so it insists on calling him a separatist anyhow.
China is presently at a loggerhead with the Dalai Lama over the issue of his successor. The Dalai Lama is considered a manifestation of Tibet’s patron-deity Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of compassion, and can only be succeeded by his reincarnation preplanned by himself.
But China wants to appoint its own successor from within a territory already under its sovereignty or control. It has passed laws to bring this about and fabricated a nonsensical historical narrative which hold that all Dalai Lama and other high lama recognitions of Tibetan Buddhism have required China’s approval since imperial times.