A delegation of American lawmakers, led by Republican Rep. Michael McCaul and including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, met with the Dalai Lama in a display of solidarity against China’s occupation of Tibet on Wednesday. The visit to the spiritual leader drew an angry response from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which warned the lawmakers not to make any contact with him and demanded the world respect its claim to Tibet, referring to it as “Xizang” using the Han Chinese colonialist name for the region.
The presence of Rep. Pelosi on the trip is a particular point of contention for Beijing, as among her final acts as Speaker of the House in 2022 was a much-publicized visit to Taiwan, a sovereign state falsely claimed by China as a province under Beijing’s control. Her meetings with then-President Tsai Ing-wen and support for Taiwan’s autonomy outraged China and prompted it to suspend talks with Washington on various issues of interest to the Biden administration, such as climate change and illegal immigration.
In addition to her audience with the Dalai Lama, Rep. Pelosi addressed the Tibetan parliament in exile in India on Tuesday, effectively recognizing Taiwan as an occupied nation rather than a Chinese province. The lawmakers also met with the President of the Central Tibetan Administration and other officials at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharamshala, India, where the Dalai Lama is based.
Communist China has occupied Tibet since its founding under Mao Zedong and has a long history of repressing local culture. Under current dictator Xi Jinping, Chinese authorities have gone further than before, not just outlawing Tibetan Buddhism but forcing children to learn Mandarin rather than Tibetan and imposing a “boarding school” system where children are abducted and indoctrinated by Han communist teachers.
In a particularly grave offense to Tibetans, the Chinese government abducted and disappeared a six-year-old boy identified as the Panchen Lama, a living Buddha on par with the Dalai Lama, in 1995. The whereabouts of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who was just two years old when he was taken, remain unknown.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian strongly condemned the lawmakers’ visit and warned the U.S. government not to pass the Resolve Tibet Act. We are gravely concerned over the relevant reports and urge the US side to fully recognize the anti-China separatist nature of the Dalai group,” he said.
In response, Rep. McCaul expressed confidence that President Biden would sign the Resolve Tibet Act, which passed Congress recently. The Act states that the United States stands with the people of Tibet and supports their right to religious freedom, cultural identity, and autonomy within the People’s Republic of China.