Why Tibet & Dalai Lama make China nervous?

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Even as the Dalai Lama has called for a 'middle way' approach, the Communist Party of China (CPC) cannot come to terms with the idea of co-existing with Tibetans as its totalitarian ethno-nationalist state has no room for a non-Han group or leader — and certainly not for someone like the Dalai Lama whom his followers revere like a god. read more
Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama speaks in a video broadcast at the start of the 15th Tibetan Religious Conference, a meeting of religious leaders in McLeod Ganj, near Dharamsala on July 2, 2025. (Photo: Sanjay Baid/AFP)
Even as the Dalai Lama has given up the demand of Tibet's independence and has called for a 'middle way' approach, China has rejected it and has continued to call the 90-year-old leader as a 'separatist'. China has made it clear that there will not be any compromise.
Under the middle way approach, the Dalai Lama has sought genuine autonomy for Tibet within the Chinese state wherein Tibetans would have rights for the management of religious, cultural, educational, linguistic, health, and environmental affairs and China would be in charge of foreign relations and defence.
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China has rejected the approach and said it calls for 'splitting China' and has accused the Dalai Lama of seeking a 'semi-independent political regime' or a 'state within a state' within China under the guise of autonomy. The real reason, however, is that an autonomous Tibet, is incompatible with Communist China's ethos.
The subjugation of Tibet has been a must for the Communist Party (CPC) and any cordial co-existence has been off the table since the very beginning, according to Prof. Tej Pratap Singh, a scholar of China at the Department of Political Science at Banaras Hindu University (BHU).
Indeed, one of the first things that the CPC leader Mao Zedong did after establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 was to order the invasion of Tibet. The fact that Chinese began the invasion of Tibet even as Tibetan negotiators were holding talks with the Chinese envoy, General Yuan Zhongxian, in Delhi shows that talks were a ruse and the invasion was decided from the beginning.
'The People's Republic of China is an ethno-nationalist state of the Han people and the Communist Party has no tolerance for any other ethnic group having a province of their own and that too an autonomous province like Tibet. Moreover, China wanted to control Tibet to lay claims to Indian territories. So, the subjugation of Tibet and the erasure of Tibetan identity have been enshrined in the foundations of Communist China,' says Singh.
Indeed, China's claims on India's Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh are rooted in its claim on Tibet. China has said that Ladakh and Arunachal are parts of Tibet, and as it claims to be a part of China, it also claims these Indian regions to be a part of China.
Totalitarian China has no room for non-Han people
Even though China claims to be a multi-ethnic, atheist state, it is a totalitarian ethno-nationalist state of the Han people.
It's not just that the vast majority of Chinese people —91 per cent— are Han, all Chinese leaders from Mao to Xi Jinping have been Han.
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By definition, an ethno-nationalist state is one in which national identity is defined by shared ethnicity. Formally, China considers 56 ethnic groups as part of China, but that is a farce as China's policies lay bare that it is a Han ethno-nationalist state and everyone has to comply to the Han way of life.
For example, China has made it clear that all religious groups and institutions in the country, whether Buddhists in Tibet or Muslims in Xinjiang, have to incorporate 'Chinese characteristics' in the practice of their religious.
For Muslims, China has even gone to the length of demolishing traditional mosques and getting them rebuilt as per the architecture of the Han people. Similarly, China has set up internment camps and put hundreds of thousands of Muslims in those camps to be taught the Han way of life — China calls them 'reeducation camps'. For Tibetan Buddhists, China has denied them the right to recognise their leader, the Dalai Lama, and has said it will appoint the next Dalai Lama.
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The 'Chinese' national identity is essentially Han identity and every ethnic group, whether Tibetan Buddhists or Uyghur Muslims, have to mould themselves as per the Han way of life, says Singh, the China scholar at BHU.
Scholars have described the imposition of Han way of life on other groups inside China in the name of Sinicization as 'internal colonialism' where regions of non-Han people like Tibet and Xinjiang have been converted into Han colonies.
No room for Tibet & Dalai Lama in China
As China is an ethno-nationalist state of Han people, a Chinese leader can never tolerate someone like the Dalai Lama — even if he offers concessions like ceding the demand for independence for autonomy within the People's Republic.
'The Dalai Lama is a symbol of Tibetan Buddhists and a reminder that Tibet had remained out of China's active control for centuries. China can never allow the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet and can never allow an autonomous Tibet to coexist with China as that would give prominence to a non-Han people and their leader. That's why China is committed to not just subjugating Tibet but keeping the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and erasing the Tibetan identity with the destruction of monasteries, replacement of Tibetan language with Mandarin, and the break-up of the Tibet province,' says Singh.
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Historically, Tibet comprised three provinces of U-Tsang in central Tibet that included Lhasa and was the spiritual centre, eastern province of Kham, and northeastern region of Amdo that had many monasteries. China broke large parts of Kham and merged them into Sichuan and Yunnan provinces and parts of Amdo were incorporated into Qinghai and Gansu. Currently, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is less than half of the size of the pre-1950 Tibet.
Singh says that China wants to name the next Dalai Lama as the one it would support would toe its line and lead its Sinicisation efforts.
'On the other hand, a successor recognised by Tibetans in exile, as the Dalai Lama announced last week, is bound to be anti-China and is bound to deny legitimacy to the Chinese rule in Tibet and any territorial claims on Indian land that arise from Chinese rule. That would be unacceptable to China,' says Singh.
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