The Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday on 6 July 2025 marks a critical juncture in Tibetans’ existential struggle to protect their national, religious and cultural identity. As Tibetans prepare to celebrate this milestone with a ‘Year of Compassion’, China is waging a systematic campaign to eliminate the spiritual leader’s influence and control Buddhist institutions in Tibet and even beyond its borders.
These efforts extend beyond Sino-Tibetan relations, representing a flashpoint at a time of broader geopolitical contests over international order. Multiple intersecting crises, including China’s expanding techno-authoritarianism, an aggressive Russia, a new administration in the U.S. and unchecked corporate tech power, present unprecedented threats to freedom, justice and democratic norms.
The 14th Dalai Lama has safeguarded Tibet’s national, cultural, and religious identity throughout his 65-year exile during the most difficult and dangerous period in Tibet’s two-millennium history. He has transformed Tibetan Buddhist principles into both a secular and spiritual force, while becoming the first Dalai Lama to transition from head of state to champion democratic governance in exile. Despite China’s attempts to isolate Tibet, his influence continues to inspire new generations within Tibet who seek freedom and political change.
Traditional Tibetan governance uniquely interweaves religious and political authority, based on the belief that leaders are enlightened beings who choose reincarnation to serve humanity. The current Dalai Lama has established frameworks to ensure institutional continuity. But Tibetan exiles must now reimagine succession planning without access to their sacred landscape – the mountains that serve as pilgrimage sites and the oracle lakes where visions of future leaders were traditionally sought – against a backdrop of geopolitical competition, regional stability concerns and evolving power relations with China.
While unprecedented global attention focuses on the potential reincarnation of a 15th Dalai Lama, Tibetans face a Chinese leadership that simultaneously promotes “unyielding Marxist atheism” while planning to install its own chosen successor. Beijing views the succession as a “protracted war,” regarding control over Tibet’s religious elite as crucial to maintaining its grip on this strategically vital region.
The implications extend beyond a single contested religious succession. The Dalai Lama’s spiritual authority resonates throughout the Indian and Nepalese Himalaya, including Bhutan and Ladakh; across Mongolia and the Central Asian Russian Republics of Tuva, Buryatia and Kalmykia; across Asia, and in Europe and America.
China’s multi-dimensional approach to controlling Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s succession presents complex challenges, but is countered by the global influence of the Dalai Lama and civilisational power of Tibetan Buddhism together with the resilience of Tibetans in protecting their culture. This also lends the administration in exile an element of strategic leverage in efforts to engage China.
At the heart of Asia, Tibet has an often overlooked strategic significance. In addition to the challenges faced by the Tibetan side in preparing for an uncertain future in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, the situation also demands new forms of multilateral engagement from neighbouring countries, Buddhist regions, and likeminded governments to counter China’s aggressive counter-influence operations and extraterritorial strategies targeting the Dalai Lama, his supporters and Tibetan Buddhism. This report details these threats both within and beyond China’s borders, drawing on regional stakeholders’ expertise to recommend countermeasures.
What hangs in the balance extends far beyond Tibet’s future—it tests the international community’s resolve to safeguard pluralism against transnational authoritarian networks whose reach increasingly transcends borders through disinformation, economic coercion, and digital control mechanisms. At this pivotal moment of systemic global instability, the Dalai Lama institution and Tibetan Buddhism represent a vital and socially progressive force, offering practical guidance on compassionate education systems, ethical leadership, and sustainable resilience at a time when alternative frameworks are most needed to navigate a fractured global order.
The report is in five parts:
- Summary Briefing
- The Dalai Lama and China’s Reincarnation Politics
- Reincarnation and the Dalai Lama: The International Dimension
- Return of the Bogd Lama: Developments in Mongolia
- Recommendations: Countering PRC Threats and Protecting Tibetan Interests
‘Sacred Authority and State Power: The Dalai Lama Institution and its Future in a Global Context’ is published by Turquoise Roof and Sinopsis, in partnership with Czechs Support Tibet.