We're gonna need a new Dalai Lama

Well, ummm, hurry and find a new one then :D:D

Srsly though, that's got some butterflies in it right there. You take out the Dalai Lama, and you take out one of the key figures China uses these days to blame the unrest on, and takes away China's ability to claim "foreign intervention" or such. Without the Dalai Lama, maybe the riots in Tibet are seen as more of an actual domestic thing, instead of being painted by Beijing as foreign inspired.

Also, ummm, can you say more riots right then and there if u take him out?
 
Even with the current Dalai Lama out of the picture, the PRC can still blame the unrest on the "splittist clique" of lesser lamas and Tibetan officials who still manage to flee.

Another butterfly: the new Dalai Lama (the one chosen by the exiles, that is). He will likely grow up in a much more radicalized and militant environment than that which surrounded OTL's Dalai Lama. If he's an infant in 1959,he'll turn 18 around 1977. So we'll have angry teenage Dalai Lama sitting across the border from a China that's still somewhat shaky and unstable as it rebuilds after the Cultural Revolution and is working out the post-Mao transition.

That's got to be a recipe for some trouble.
 
Another butterfly: the new Dalai Lama (the one chosen by the exiles, that is).

My understanding is that the new Dalai Lama is located a few years after the death of the last. I'm thinking it will be some kid born to a family of exiles in northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, or Sikkim.

He will likely grow up in a much more radicalized and militant environment than that which surrounded OTL's Dalai Lama. If he's an infant in 1959,he'll turn 18 around 1977.

The Dalai Lama is a punk rocker...
 
My understanding is that the new Dalai Lama is located a few years after the death of the last. I'm thinking it will be some kid born to a family of exiles in northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, or Sikkim.

No, there's probably going to be some degree of disagreement. The PRC picked their own Panchen Lama.
 
And the Panchen Lama is in charge of finding the next Dalai Lama. Guess who's got the Panchen Lama at this point in time?

So yeah, a bunch of exiles can find some kid and name him Dalai Lama. But it won't have a great deal of authority. Basically, it will look like the same sort of opportunism that the PRC are committing IOTL.
 

glowjack

Banned
Just to let you guys know, I grew up in China. They call the dali lama an treasonous agitator but no one seriously tries to blame him or believes the blame, he is not really a person of significance in China (only in the western media in relation to China) and he has been gone from Tibet too long visiting celebrities for Tibetans to really relate to.(and most Chinese ppl don't care either way about Tibetans).

Cultural genocide is total bullshit, cultures change and adapt; they cannot die short of genocide. Forcing people to take to retain a certain culture is oppressive and destructive, most companies would rather hire mandarin Hans who can speak to 99% of China compared to Tibetans- so it would only make sense for Tibetans who want better lives for their families to start learning Mandarin and in a generation or two their kids wouldn't see a reason to learn Tibetan except to swear. Most Tibetans would like big cars and houses and most Tibetans would like TVs, ipods, and PCs, but you can't adopt an culture's material aspect without adopting its norms and values to a certain extent. Nomads (and lazy north American natives) cannot exist in a modern world as they were (or whatever remains of their culture) and most of them don't want to. Its just the progressives who insist that people are equal and the egalitarians who in the search of an ideal society and failing to find one in the present resort to destroyed cultures from the past.
 
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The Vulture

Banned
Would the Tibetans accept the new puppet Dalai Lama? I suppose his secular authority couldn't really be questioned, but his religious authority is another kettle of fish altogether. The Chinese might need to step up their propaganda game.
 
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