Controversial Chosen One Tours Tibet

Both boys are too young to shave, and neither counts his age beyond the fingers of two hands. Both live in the Chinese capital surrounded by police who supervise their every move.

But only one is His Holiness the 11th Panchen Lama, the second-most revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism, who by tradition reigns in this gritty but sacred city in the highlands of south-central Tibet.

Which of the two boys it is depends on which side you take in a bitter row that pits the devotion of millions of Tibetan Buddhists against the power of the world’s last Communist giant.

Already at odds with the man at the top of the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, the exiled Dalai Lama, the Chinese government is engulfed in an imbroglio over the ancient faith’s No. 2 slot--a controversy that has aggravated already strained relations between religious Tibetans and China’s atheistic regime.

Tensions have grown in the last week and a half as the Chinese-appointed Panchen Lama journeyed amid tight security to Tibet for the first time since the government installed him in the post in 1995. On Monday, the boy appeared in public briefly at a religious festival in Shigatse, Tibet’s second-largest city, before being whisked away, as happened on the festival’s opening day 24 hours earlier.

China’s 11th Panchen Lama is 9-year-old Erdeni Chosgyi Gyalpo, a descendant of nomadic Tibetan herders who has spent the last four years in Beijing studying classic Buddhist texts and scriptures.

But to a wizened Tibetan street vendor named Gyashi, the boy is something else. “He’s a fake,” said the man, with a dismissive snort and wave of the hand.

Instead, for Gyashi and many others, the genuine article is 10-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who, like his younger rival, lives in Beijing--but under house arrest. The 10-year-old, along with the rest of his family, has lived the life of a virtual prisoner since the Dalai Lama infuriated China’s leaders by naming him as the reincarnated Panchen Lama without their consent in May 1995.

Beijing denounced the Dalai Lama’s choice as politically motivated and accused the exiled leader of flouting established religious rites. Six months later it replaced the Dalai Lama’s choice with its own candidate following a government-overseen lottery ritual.

The succession flap underscores how sensitive the Communist regime is to the continuing influence in Tibet of the Dalai Lama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner whom China regards as a “splittist” bent on breaking up the country.

Chinese Communist troops moved into Tibet nearly five decades ago. In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet for exile in India after an unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. China considers Tibet an “autonomous region” within the People’s Republic, akin to other provinces administered by the Communist government.

The Dalai Lama has agreed to allow China to continue exercising political control over Tibet if he can return as a purely religious leader.

But Beijing links Tibetan Buddhism to nationalist and separatist activity, and fears that the figure of the Panchen Lama--who practitioners believe is a living god--could become yet another major flash point in the struggle over religious expression and Chinese rule.

Aware of widespread opposition to its choice, Beijing has put the boy under heavy armed guard for his trip to Tibet, which began in Lhasa a week and a half ago.

About two dozen sharpshooters lined the roof of the Jokhang Temple, Lhasa’s holiest site, when the boy visited in early morning darkness on June 18, witnesses said. During his 90-minute visit, he received scarves in tribute from the temple’s monks, some of whom said that the government had ordered them to present the offerings.

“If he were the real reincarnation, the government wouldn’t have to be so severe,” said one young monk, his wiry frame hidden beneath the loose folds of his crimson robe. “But the fact that they were shows that they have their own demons about it.”

No ordinary Tibetans appear to have had any access to the official Panchen Lama so far.

“Reports of heavy security around the boy confirm the lack of popular support and the enduring problems China will have trying to impose religious leaders in Tibet,” said John Ackerly, president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet.

At the hillside Tashi Lhunpo Monastery here in Shigatse, an imposing compound that has served as the seat of the Panchen Lama for more than 300 years, men in monks’ robes patrolled the grounds with walkie-talkies Monday morning before the boy arrived to kick off the second day of one of Shigatse’s most important religious events, the annual “Kuiku” festival.

He came just before 8 a.m., somewhere in a 21-vehicle police motorcade that swept past a group of foreign reporters in the lamasery’s outermost courtyard--the closest that foreign journalists have gotten to the child since his appointment.

Pilgrims who had come to watch the boy preside over the unfurling of a 10-story Buddha painting, known as a thangka, had to wait outside the monastery a long distance away from the ceremony. From their vantage point, the participants looked like mere specks.

Onlookers prayed, fingered their beads or prostrated themselves on the cold pavement. Others waited for the boy to leave after about an hour, as he had on the opening day Sunday, so that they could climb the hillside to file past the billowing thangka and make obeisances.

The number of pilgrims was smaller than usual for the festival, locals said. On Sunday, about 20,000 people paraded past the colorful first thangka, braving wind and a smattering of rain.

“Most people don’t recognize this Panchen Lama,” declared one local man, a devout Buddhist and follower of the previous Panchen Lama, who died in 1989. “That’s why there are much fewer people. Normally, with the old Panchen, there would be 60,000 people up there.”

Portraits of the much-beloved 10th Panchen Lama abound in shops and public buildings around Shigatse--but few depicting his Beijing-appointed heir hang beside them.

State media have dubbed the new Panchen Lama “soul boy” and raved about his command of Buddhist scripture, describing him as “convincing his followers that he is the true reincarnation of the last Panchen Lama,” the New China News Agency reported last week.

Many Tibetans are unpersuaded, clinging to the Dalai Lama’s original choice. But people are wary of talking openly about the succession controversy, fearful of spies and informants employed by the Chinese authorities to root out those suspected of siding too closely with the exiled Buddhist leader.

“I don’t know,” a Shigatse native wearing a Chicago Bulls cap replied nervously, when asked if he thought the officially designated Panchen Lama was the authentic one. “Some people think so.”

Then, leaning over, he whispered: “Let’s not talk about it now--there are too many police about.”

At Tashi Lhunpo, whose graceful, gold-roofed buildings were first erected in the 15th century, a monk sitting with some friends jabbed his thumb at a nearby official, hissed “Party secretary!” and put a finger to his lips.

The monastery, like most others in Tibet, has been hard hit during Chinese rule over the past 40 years.

Before Beijing-ordered “democratic reforms” in Tibet began in 1959, Tashi Lhunpo was home to 3,800 monks. That number is down to 800, which authorities say is adequate to fulfill the area’s needs.