China’s Changing Approach to Tibet

In recent times, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) worries about regime stability have shaped its approach to religion. This is clearly seen in the party’s Document No. 9, released in 2013, which includes organised religion—in addition to notions of democratic representation, the role of non-profits, and more—among the forces that could break up the People’s Republic of China.^[1]

This fear seemed to have been spurred by the fate of the Communist Party in the erstwhile Soviet Union (which collapsed in 1991) that had been an ideological template for the CCP. Chinese President Xi Jinping underlined this in a speech during the National Conference on Religious Work in Beijing in April 2016, where he stated that religious preaching should adhere to patriotism and socialism, and that the country needed to guard against overseas infiltration through religious institutions.^[2]

Xi’s fear is not unfounded. During the Cold War, the West chose a strategy of organising resistance against communist regimes without deploying hard power. Part of such strategy was providing covert backing to religious and anti-Marxist groups within communist countries.^[3] It was not by mere chance, for instance, that in the late 1970s, Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła from Poland was elected Pope (John Paul II). Former US National Security Advisor Richard Allen has since termed the compact between the Vatican and the United States (US) as “one of the great secret alliances of all time.”^[4] This secret agreement ensured that there was sharing of important intelligence inputs. Choosing a Polish Pope was a deliberate step by the West, since among the communist countries of the time, Poland was the one most steeped in religion. Cardinal Wojtyla was used to expedite the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

China learnt a lesson from this episode. To prevent any such infiltration in its own country, it has sought to control organised religion by becoming a stakeholder in the process of choosing Catholic priests. It has struck a deal with the Vatican, for example, under which, when the Holy See nominates a bishop in China, it chooses only from a shortlist of candidates vetted by the Party-state.^[5]

The Party-state is thus working to create a collective ‘national identity’ and slowly erase all ‘ethnic identities’ in the country. Its attitude to Buddhism in Tibet is similar. Campaigners like Gyal Lo, a sociologist who has studied China’s assimilation of minorities through education, have highlighted how China has shut schools teaching Tibetan and instead expanded the network of its boarding schools, where Tibetan children are taught in Mandarin (Putonghua), not their mother tongue Tibetan—one of the many initiatives that aim to Sinicise Tibetans.^[6]

India’s Approach to Tibet

New Delhi maintained cordial relations with the Dalai Lama, who was then the ruler of Tibet, after Independence in 1947. Following the CCP’s takeover in Beijing in December 1949, and its army’s subsequent invasion of Tibet in October 1950, India tried hard to ensure, while still maintaining ties with the religious leader, that it did not antagonise Communist China.^[7] It did not want peace on its eastern border disturbed. In November 1950, in the backdrop of the Cold War, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru merely stated that India’s interest in Tibet was to help it maintain a “large measure of her autonomy”, while condemning Western powers that sought to use Tibet as leverage against China.^[8]

A section of India’s political elite, however, always had some sympathy for Tibetans and their plight under Chinese occupation. Indira Gandhi, when prime minister, privately told USSR leaders that she had been opposed to the “illegal” annexation of Tibet by China, and that was the reason India offered the Dalai Lama refuge when he fled Tibet to escape from the Chinese in March 1959.^[a],[9] Another staunch supporter of Tibetan freedom was the socialist trade union leader and later union minister, George Fernandes. During the brief rule of the opposition Janata Party in 1977-79, Fernandes, then a minister, had urged Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin during the latter’s visit to India to back Tibetan independence, even as the Janata Party government’s official stance was that “Tibet is a part of China.”^[10]

The changing perspectives of different governments in India, as well as the state of the India-China relationship, has also impacted India’s outlook towards Tibet. In 1998, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government conducted India’s second nuclear tests—in a letter to then US President Bill Clinton at the time, Vajpayee justified the tests by citing the Chinese threat to India’s security. The leak of the missive in the media created a furore, with Beijing reacting strongly at being singled out by New Delhi; it affected the entire India-China relationship.^[11]

However, a year later, following the visit of then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to Beijing, high-level exchanges between the two countries resumed, along with a security dialogue that allowed both sides to discuss their concerns. Subsequently, Vajpayee visited Beijing in June 2003—the  first visit by an Indian head of government to China in nearly a decade.^[12] It was following this visit that New Delhi began acknowledging the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) as a part of China, while in turn, Beijing, which had strongly opposed Sikkim’s merger with India in 1975, stopped showing it as a separate country in its maps. The contours of the TAR, however, do not include all of what historically constituted Tibet, but only the region known as ‘Outer Tibet’. Thus, by recognising the TAR’s boundaries, India also conceded that ‘Inner Tibet’ or large parts of the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Qinghai adjoining the TAR, which used to be part of Tibet, were fully Chinese territory, denied even the limited autonomy the TAR enjoyed.^[13] Vajpayee’s visit also saw the mechanism of Special Representatives (SRs) of both countries being set up to work out a political settlement of the long-standing India-China boundary conflict. Overall, the visit seemed to underline that, contrary to Vajpayee’s assertion to Clinton five years earlier, China did not pose a threat to India.^[14]

With a political transition following the 2004 general election, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) formed the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Since the UPA was dependent on the communist parties for its parliamentary majority, the bilateral relationship with China became an extremely important factor during its rule, with much effort being made to strengthen ties.^[15] There is fair evidence that the communist parties’ support for the UPA circumscribed its approach to China. Vijay Gokhale, former Foreign Secretary who also served as Indian Ambassador to China, has even alleged that China used its links with the Indian communist parties to build opposition to the India-US nuclear deal of 2008.^[b],[16]

In January 2008, like Vajpayee earlier, Singh too visited Beijing, during which both sides resolved to create, as their ‘Shared Visions on the 21st century’ communique declared, “a harmonious world of durable peace”. The ‘shared vision’ envisioned that India-China bilateral ties would have significant regional and global influence and even impact the “future of the international system.” During Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s reciprocal visit to India in December 2010, the two countries signed the ‘Political Parameters and Guiding Principles’ that they agreed would be the basis of whatever final border settlement the two nations arrived at.^[17] The ‘Chindia’ notion, that of India and China rising together, began gaining traction from that time.^[18]

This bonhomie led to Delhi going the extra mile to assuage Beijing’s sensitivity about Tibet—in November 2007, for instance, the government instructed ministers not to attend a function organised by the Gandhi Peace Foundation to honour the Dalai Lama.^[19] A year later, during the Olympics torch relay preceding the Beijing Olympics which passed through India, the government clamped down on movement in the heart of New Delhi, for fear that Tibetan refugees living in India might demonstrate against it, protesting  human rights violations in Tibet.^[20] Moreover, since 2008, India stopped declaring that Tibet Autonomous Region was part of China.^[21]

India’s Post-2014 Tibet Outlook

The 2014 general election marked a watershed in Indian politics. After three decades of coalition or minority governments, a single political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a simple majority on its own in the Lok Sabha. Shorn of the need to appease electoral allies, the BJP charted a new, less conciliatory course with China. For a start, newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile—based in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, ever since the Dalai Lama had fled China—for his swearing-in ceremony, along with the heads of states and heads of government of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan.^[22]

Relations between the two countries soon soured further. Even as Chinese President Xi Jinping was visiting India in September 2014, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) intruded into Indian territory at Chumar and Demchok in eastern Ladakh, forcing an aggressive response from Indian troops. During his joint press conference with Xi following the attack, Modi did not hesitate to warn China.^[23]

While more than 120 nations sent representatives to the grand Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summit that Xi convened in May 2017, India opposed the entire so-called “project of the century”, arguing that connectivity initiatives like the BRI should be grounded in universally recognised international norms, good governance, rule of law, and transparency, and should not create unsustainable debt.^[24] Specifically, India objected to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), being built as part of the BRI, since it cuts across the portion of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan, citing sovereignty and issues of territorial integrity.^[25] Following the February 2019 terror attack in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which killed 40 Indian security personnel, Beijing initially vetoed the United Nations’ sanctions committee from declaring Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, alleged by India to have masterminded the attack, from being labelled a global terrorist.^[c],[26]

Notwithstanding these differences, Modi, during his first term, also made an effort to reach out to Beijing, emphasising however, the need for reciprocity in the India-China relationship, with both countries respecting each other’s concerns. Sushma Swaraj, India’s foreign minister at the time, made it clear to her Chinese counterpart in 2014 that if Beijing did not respect India’s “one-India” stance (that parts of Kashmir which were under Pakistan’s occupation, belonged to India), New Delhi could not be expected to support China’s “one-China policy” (that both Tibet and Taiwan were integral parts of China).^[27]

However, the relationship has remained turbulent. They plunged to a new low when Indian troops resisted a Chinese attempt, in mid-June 2017, to extend a border road at Doklam, the trijunction of Bhutan, China, and India (disputed part of Bhutan-China boundary). Both sides would later begin to mend fences, which led to an informal Modi-Xi meeting in Wuhan in April 2018. A year later, as exiled Tibetans celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet to India in March 1959, India’s Ministry of External Affairs instructed officials not to attend it.^[28] Relations seemed to be improving further when Modi and Xi had a second meeting in Chennai in October 2019.

A rude shock awaited India eight months later, when in June 2020, PLA troops mounted an attack in Ladakh’s Galwan valley that killed 20 Indian soldiers—tantamount to attempting to change the status quo unilaterally along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).^[29] China followed up by amassing more troops and weaponry on the LAC, and began trying to alter it incrementally by force in several other places over the next few months.

This completely changed New Delhi’s strategic calculus vis-à-vis China. As Defence Minister Rajnath Singh bluntly informed his Chinese counterpart when they met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ Meeting in April 2023,^[30] India felt that Beijing’s belligerence had “completely eroded the entire basis” of the India-China relationship. Thus, if the foundation of India-China dynamics that are based on principles of “mutual sensitivity, mutual respect and mutual interests” came undone, it gave the Modi government enough room to reset its own responses. India deployed its Special Frontier Force (SFF)— a unit under the command of its external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, and comprising mostly Tibetan refugees—to capture positions along the LAC.^[31] A senior party functionary attended the funeral of an SSF soldier.^[32] PM Modi conveyed birthday greetings to the Dalai Lama in 2021 in a social media post.^[33]

Serendipitously, US interest in the Tibet issue was also suddenly renewed. In June 2024, it passed the Tibet Resolve Act,^[34] which not only exhorted China to re-engage with elected representatives of the Tibetan government-in-exile over Tibet’s future—the fruitless negotiations, with China refusing to yield an inch, had halted in 2010^[35]—but also enjoined the US government to make multilateral efforts for a negotiated settlement on Tibet. It mandated that the US allocate funds to counter Chinese disinformation about Tibetan history and the Dalai Lama.^[36] It mooted a statutory definition of Tibet encompassing not only the TAR but also the parts of Tibet outside the TAR which have been merged with its neighbouring provinces.^[37]

In the same month that the Act was passed, a US Congressional delegation led by then House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also visited Dharamshala to meet the Dalai Lama and members of the Tibetan government-in-exile. In her speech, Pelosi praised the Dalai Lama and criticised Xi. The delegation also subsequently met Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in New Delhi, suggesting that the visit had the tacit approval of the Indian government.

The signal to Beijing was clear: If it did not respect India’s concerns about territorial integrity and sovereignty, India too, could be equally cavalier towards Beijing’s. This was a change from the earlier Indian approach of largely—despite having given the Dalai Lama refuge—being deferential to China’s red-line on Tibet. India’s new stance appears prompted both by the observations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, whose December 2018 report maintained that India had been “overly cautious with China about their sensitivities” while dealing with Taiwan and Tibet, considering that “China does not exhibit the same deference” while discussing India’s sovereignty concerns, be it on Arunachal Pradesh or the CPEC”, as by popular opinion within the country.^[38]

An ORF opinion poll of urban youth in the country, published in its ‘Foreign Policy Survey 2024’, found a large majority (81 percent) of respondents citing the “Chinese occupation of Tibet” as having the biggest negative impact on India-China relations.^[39] The same poll found nearly 50 percent of respondents wanting the government to actively engage with the US to oppose China’s stated intention of  anointing a successor to the present Dalai Lama, who is 90 years old, without consulting the Tibetan community in exile.^[40]

Perils of a Proactive Approach

India is disinclined to up the ante on Tibet beyond a point. First, earlier attempts to do so have been counterproductive. In the early 1960s, for instance, soon after the Dalai Lama’s escape to India, the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had trained Tibetan refugees at a guerrilla training centre in Camp Hale, Colorado, to infiltrate Tibet and foment a rebellion there.^[41] Indian intelligence had collaborated with the CIA, and indeed helped it install a surveillance device in the Himalayas to monitor China’s nuclear programme.^[42] But the effort failed and the programme was later abandoned. Unsurprisingly, it sowed seeds of mistrust between India and China that may have been one of the factors behind China’s attack on India in October 1962; the then Chinese President Liu Shaoqi had even said that India needed to be punished.^[43]

Second, India can never be sure about the changing priorities of the different US administrations. In the early 1970s, it was the avowed anti-Communist Richard Nixon, who in a complete turnaround as president, brought China into the global mainstream, and later under the Jimmy Carter administration switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. So too, though the US is committed, under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, to ensuring Taiwan’s defence against a Chinese—or any other—invasion, recent observations by US Undersecretary of Defence Elbridge Colby suggest that President Donald Trump’s administration, close to concluding a trade deal with China, may be considering a rethink. Colby claimed that the US military is “overextended” due to its international commitments, and added that Taiwan was not an “existential interest” for his country, more so because, given the US’s “deteriorating military balance” with China, a conflict with it could debilitate the US military.^[44]

The notion of truncated defence capabilities seen in conjunction with changing priorities of Trump 2.0 has given rise to a sense of vulnerability. This sentiment is further reinforced by the Trump 2.0’s National Security Strategy (NSS) released at the end of 2025 that states: not every region was worthy America’s attention, and that the US should not be “propping up the entire world order like Atlas”; instead, US allies and partners should take up “primary responsibility” for their neighbourhood.^[45] The NSS also appraises remarkable accretion of Beijing’s strength as it has transformed from a poor nation to a “near-peer” of Washington. Alternatively, Chinese strategists like Shen Yi from Fudan university perceive Washington making adjustments to effect a “strategic withdrawal”.^[46] Mao Keji foresees a downturn in US-India relations, basing this that Trump 2.0 is moving away from the belief of strategic altruism with respect to partners like India. He posits that Trump 2.0 sees America’s allies and partners more as “blood bags” [xuè bāo (血包)] to restore strength, and not as instruments to contain China.^[47] With a changing Washington approach that Beijing interprets as a strategic retreat, New Delhi fears it may similarly be left to fend for itself against China if it escalates tensions over Tibet.

Yet another precedent of how fickle the US’s support, and that of the West in general, can be, is seen in the case of J&K. Although the princely state of J&K had initially chosen to remain independent when the British withdrew from India in August 1947 after dividing it up into India and Pakistan, it chose to join India after Pakistan attacked it in October 1947, trying to take over the entire territory. But despite India, of its own volition, taking the matter of Pakistan’s attack to the United Nations, Western powers—which dominate the UN—persistently refused to characterise the attack as an invasion, insisting instead that it was a territorial dispute.^[48]

Third, if India rakes up Tibet, China could well retaliate by fanning the numerous separatist movements in India’s northeastern states.^[49] China has a long history of doing so, dating from the Naga insurgency of the 1950s; media reports suggest that even currently, the exiled chief of the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), Paresh Barua, is being sheltered in China’s Yunnan province.^[50] Senior Indian Army officials serving in the region claim it is entirely possible that China had a role in the recent ethnic unrest in Manipur.^[51]

Tibet in the Future Trajectory of India-China Relations

On 21 October 2024, India and China resolved their longstanding military standoff along the LAC, finalising patrolling arrangements along their friction points in eastern Ladakh that were acceptable to both. Two days later, Modi met Xi on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.^[52] Since then, there have been regular meetings lower down the hierarchy to chart the direction of normalising relations. The negotiations by Special Representatives (SRs) have been restarted in 2024 after a gap of nearly five years.^[53] As a confidence-building measure, the Chinese side has restarted allowing the annual Indian pilgrimage—between June and August—to Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet.^[54]

Amidst seemingly normalising relations, public opinion in India still supports a more muscular policy on Tibet. Besides, a looming issue could well be the choice of the next Dalai Lama. In July 2025, the Dalai Lama announced that the Gaden Phodrang trust, which handles all his religious, cultural, and humanitarian initiatives, would start its search for his successor, to which the Chinese government reiterated its earlier assertion that it wanted a say in the process.^[55] In response, Kiren Rijiju, Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs as well as Minority Affairs, who also hails from the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh that is being claimed by China, dismissed the demand, insisting that only the religious leader and established conventions would decide the succession process.^[56] This invited a prompt rebuttal from Xu Feihong, Chinese Ambassador to India, who maintained that since “the lineage of the Dalai Lamas took shape and evolved within China's Tibet region, his religious status and titles are the prerogative of the central government of China.” Though Rijju had insisted he was speaking in his personal capacity, Xu accused the Indian government of tacitly backing the Dalai Lama’s position on the matter.^[57]

“Peaking” China, Rising India, and Tibet

How nations perceive themselves and the threats they face impact their diplomatic outlook. In recent years, China appears to be returning to a state of heightened paranoia, seeing enemies within and without. In July 2024, during the CCP’s Plenum, Xi cautioned that the international situation had become unpredictable, warning of “black swan” events that could threaten the Party’s grip on power.^[58] The Plenum communique resolved to ramp up national security and work towards creating a “unified national population management system”.^[59] In May 2025, for the first time, China released a White Paper on national security that spelt out the threats it perceived from ethnic and religious divisions, extremism, as well as from forces which it claimed were plotting a “colour revolution”^[d] in the country aimed at overthrowing the current regime.^[60] Given this approach of China’s rulers, they may well tighten their grip further on Tibet as the Dalai Lama’s succession becomes even more urgent. Already, government officials have been placed in Tibet’s monasteries, and Tibetan monks have to mandatorily undergo “patriotic re-education”.^[61]

Meanwhile, India has many concerns more urgent than Tibet. First, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has resurfaced again in a big way, as the 22 April 2025 attack in Pahalgam in J&K that killed 26 civilians, clearly testified. India’s new doctrine of treating actions of private terror groups as acts of war^[62] puts a greater onus on its military establishment to remain perennially prepared for immediate conflict. Second, the US, after many years, is again cosying up to Pakistan, reportedly eyeing the country as a base to help out Israel as its hostilities with Iran increase. Pakistani Army sources have confirmed that Tel Aviv-Tehran tensions were discussed during Trump’s meeting with Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir in June 2025.^[63] A Washington-Islamabad compact may well be in the offing, with its inevitable fallout on the Kashmir issue. It is thus highly likely that India may hold back from pursuing the Tibet issue effectively.

At the heart of the Tibet question remains the battle of conflicting narratives. Was it historically always a part of China, or did it mostly have an independent identity with many similarities to Indian culture? China’s 2021 White Paper on Tibet reiterates the former assertion.^[64] India could try to subtly counter this by drawing attention to the osmosis between Indian and Tibetan languages, cultures, and religions. There are institutes—such as the US-based 108 Peace Institute founded by former Sikyong (elected leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile) Lobsang Sangay; the Norbulingka Institute in Dharamshala, dedicated to preserving Tibetan art and culture; and the Tibet Museum, also in Dharamshala—which can be used to counter Chinese propaganda. In April 2023, India organised the Global Buddhist Summit in New Delhi which was addressed by Prime Minister Modi and the Dalai Lama, albeit on separate days.^[65] Such initiatives should continue, as they enable the Tibetan community to tell its story, while presenting a counter-narrative to Chinese disinformation.

Conclusion

Tibet remains a conspicuous but understated factor in India–China relations. Historically, India had refrained from raising the question of Tibet with China due to diplomatic circumspection and territorial vulnerabilities, even as sympathies for the Tibetan cause persisted among sections of the political elite and the public. However, recent tensions with China—especially Beijing trying to change the status quo on the LAC—have reopened the strategic space for New Delhi to reconsider its Tibet policy.

In 2025, the nonagenarian Dalai Lama kickstarted the search for his successor, and China has asserted a stake in the process. Worries among India’s strategic community also remain over the evolving US-China dynamics under a Trump administration. At a time when there is rising sentiment of territorial expansionism in China, and Beijing is framing Tibet as a part of China historically, New Delhi must up the ante in a battle of narratives and highlight Tibet’s distinct identity and cultural connections with India. India can strategically counter Chinese propaganda by promoting Tibetan culture and institutions internationally while steering clear of overt political confrontation.  

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All views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author, and do not represent the Observer Research Foundation, either in its entirety or its officials and personnel.

Endnotes

• International Affairs
• China
• India
• Neighbourhood
• china tibet policy
• india china border dispute
• india china border skirmish
• india china conflict
• india china lac
• india china relations
• india policy on tibet
• india tibet policy
• india tibet policy

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