On the eve of the swearing in of the newly elected leader and parliament of the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamshala at the end of May 2026, the Chinese Communist Party issued a warning to India via the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi. Its spokesperson, Yu Jing, warned India via a social media post to stay away from the issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it was an “internal matter” that followed “long-established religious rituals and historical conventions that have, for centuries, required the approval of China’s central government”, with such an “established process” followed even for the selection of the present 14th Dalai Lama.Jing’s post expressed China’s hope that India would not provide a platform for activities advocating for Tibetan independence, and cautioned against any “external interference” on the issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, which “is purely an internal matter of China”. She concluded, “The so-called “Central Tibetan Administration” is not recognised by any sovereign country, and its leadership has neither the legitimacy to represent the Tibetan people nor the authority to make claims regarding the reincarnation process”.As a former student of game theory, the timing and content of this statement on the back of various hardliner policies implemented in Tibet in recent years has piqued my interest, for one would imagine every card and advantage over Tibet is firmly in China’s corner, as a country that successfully pursued the four modernisations – agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology – under Deng Xiaoping and is today a great power wielding significant global economic, military, technological and therefore political clout.The timing of this statement is curious, for it is almost a full year since the 90th birthday celebrations of the Dalai Lama in July 2025 and his unequivocal statement issued at the time that his Ganden Phodrang Trust has the “sole authority” to recognise his future reincarnation and that “no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter”. In his recent political autobiography, Voice for the Voiceless: Over Seven Decades of Struggle with China for My Land and My People, the Dalai Lama has also made clear that his reincarnation will be born in a free country.The timing is also curious as the present Dalai Lama voluntarily chose to end the simultaneous temporal and spiritual leadership of the Dalai Lama lineage 15 years ago in 2011, bringing the curtain down on a 369-year-old institution in favour of democratically elected Tibetan governments in exile, in order to allow them to practice democracy in waiting, before they returned home to introduce it in reality. The incoming parliament in Dharamshala is thereby seasoned and not novice by any stretch.The most curious is the content, wherein India is warned not to provide any platform for Tibetan independence (‘Rangzen’ in Tibetan). In the 1980s, in dawning recognition of prevailing realpolitik, the Dalai Lama ceded the struggle for the full independence of Tibet for the Middle Way Approach (‘Umay Lam’ in Tibetan) of genuine autonomy within the People’s Republic of China, even while acknowledging its unpopularity among a section of Tibetans, and yet himself continuing to advocate for such freedom of expression and dissent.It is a sign of a mature democracy that Tibetans in exile are free to debate and follow any of these two positions and it is the youth that tend to favour full independence, so is China’s statement implicitly acknowledging where they believe the Tibetan movement will go after the present Dalai Lama? To truly understand how hard the Dalai Lama has tried within his lifetime to reach a peaceful negotiation with China, one has to read his envoy Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari’s tome, ‘The Dalai Lama’s Special Envoy: Memoirs of a Lifetime in Pursuit of a Reunited Tibet’ (Columbia University Press 2022). Is this recent statement of China acknowledging the missed opportunity afforded by the Dalai Lama’s olive branch of a Middle Way Approach, that sort to accommodate China’s own geopolitical land and resource etc. interests as much as it tried so hard to protect Tibet’s basic right to their own culture, religion, language and distinct nomadic, environmentally conscious ways?Setting aside the irony of a Communist regime seeking to control the reincarnation of a Buddhist religious leader, again, one would imagine with the State Religious Affairs Bureau Order No. 5 of 2007 that regulates and requires government approval for the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhist monastics, and the official online database of “verified” Living Buddhas launched by the CCP in 2016, they have all bases covered. Their official Panchen Lama candidate is also ferried around internally, with audiences impelled and paid to attend his sermons, with rumour having it he is soon to visit Russia, too.One would imagine all this ought to reassure the CCP, rather than leaving them so nervous about a 90-years plus stateless Dalai Lama and his future reincarnation? Perhaps Mao was prescient to respond to the Dalai Lama’s escape in 1959 with the exclamation, “We have lost!”, because as the Dalai Lama recounts in his book, he has witnessed five different eras of leadership of China—under Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping, with “tremendous change hidden beneath apparent continuity of a single governing Communist Party”.This recent statement of China, along with their Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress passed in March 2026, and the enactment of colonial boarding schools for a million Tibetan children in last years, reflects their externally unfathomable but deep internal insecurity. India would do well to continue to provide a home and support to the present Dalai Lama and his future reincarnation, because doing so has revitalised and reestablished India as the living ground of Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings for followers across the world. And because when has China been a true friend to India, affording us peaceful borders as Tibet once did?Kaveri Gill is Senior Fellow, Centre for Excellence in Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence.