Image 1 of 4

Harry Wu (Laogai Research Foundation)

China's regulation of Tibetan Buddhism is stoking a heated controversy among specialists, with some suspecting Beijing of a power play in disguise.

One skeptic is Harry Wu, founder of the Laogai Research Foundation. Wu's 19-year confinement in China's laogai prison camps has driven him to a lifelong human rights campaign for those he says have been abused by the Chinese government.

"It is an individual story but you have to know there are 40 (million)-50 million people that were in the labor camps," Wu said in a phone interview. "In Germany, if you were Jewish, you went to the camps. But in Communist China, you went to the camps because you were a capitalist or a landowner."

As a close friend of Tibet's religious leader the Dalai Lama, Wu resents the regulation of Tibetan Buddhism. Most recently, he has spoken against what he says is China's kidnapping of Tibetan Buddhist leaders and the establishment of its own, more sympathetic leaders.

The regulation of Tibetan Buddhism is one of countless ways the Chinese government has abused the Tibetan people since the Dalai Lama's exile, said Lee Edwards, a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

“Over the last five decades, those who resisted Chinese control have been killed or sent to labor camps; monasteries have been looted and destroyed; Tibetans have been placed in communes and their basic rights routinely violated," Edwards said at a recent Heritage event on the future of Tibet. "It’s been estimated that the number of Tibetans that have been killed, imprisoned, tortured or starved under Chinese rule is as high as 800,000."

The conflict has centered mainly on Tibet's two most important leaders. The Dalai Lama traditionally is both the spiritual and political head of the Tibetan people. During the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, he fled to sanctuary in India and has lived there since.

The Panchen Lama, while subordinate to the Dalai Lama, is responsible for identifying the leader’s reincarnation. But the Chinese government placed the young Tibetan-designated Panchen Lama into what it termed protective custody and then assigned that title to another child.

Recently, the Dalai Lama announced that he will not reincarnate in a Chinese-occupied Tibet. He has said that he might even choose the person in which he will reincarnate, something that has never been done before. He has also raised the possibility of breaking custom by choosing to reincarnate in someone who is female.

China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs has responded to the Dalai Lama's announcements by imposing regulations on his reincarnation, a move they say will protect the purity and effectiveness of Tibetan Buddhism. Still, Wu says the holding of the Panchen Lama is a sign that the Chinese government is out to destroy the Tibetan people.

The Chinese government, however, says it wants to protect the special interests of the religion, not destroy it.

"In order to comply with the people's wishes, and to ensure the regular order and healthy development of Tibetan Buddhism, the State Council issued regulations," said Ye Xiaowen, head of the State Administration of Religious Affairs, answering a question from the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

Wu scoffed at that assertion, saying that China’s rulers “are not into religion; (they) are Communists.”

Mary Beth Markey, vice president for advocacy at the International Campaign for Tibet, said the answer lies in control.

“The Chinese Communist Party anticipates that they will be able to take control of the reincarnation process and find a candidate that they can school and groom and turn into a patriotic Lama," Markey said. "Hence they will no longer have conflict because they will have someone they have molded into adopting the policies and priorities of the Beijing government.”

Other human rights specialists agree. John Roberts, an international political consultant in the Reagan White House, said the Chinese government’s intervention in Tibet is a ploy to create a religious schism. Then, he said, it will be easier for China to change the ideology of the Tibetan people to that of the Chinese Communist Party.

Wu, however, sees a more sinister motive in Beijing's policies.

"They are destroying the Tibetans, destroying their religion, destroying their independence. It's simple,” Wu said. “Why do the Tibetans need them? They have their own religion."