China’s Xi meets Panchen Lama, urges continued ‘sinicisation of religion’

Chinese President Xi Jinping met the Panchen Lama on Friday and called for continued efforts to promote the “sinicisation of religion”, state media reports said.

The call from Xi comes exactly one month before the exiled Dalai Lama’s critical 90th birthday, when the Tibetan spiritual leader has indicated he may reveal his preferred method for choosing a successor.

According to state news agency Xinhua, Xi received a visit from the Panchen Lama in Beijing and expressed hopes that he would “work hard to become a Tibetan living Buddha with profound knowledge of Buddhism, beloved by monks and lay followers, and take the lead in obeying the law and adhering to the precepts”.

The Panchen Lama is the second-highest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism, after the Dalai Lama.

The current Dalai Lama has been in exile in India since the People’s Liberation Army suppressed an armed uprising in Tibet in 1959. Beijing accuses him of being responsible for the unrest in Tibet in the 1980s and 2008 – charges he has denied.

  

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