by Orville Schell

NEW YORK, December 11, 1995, (The New Yorker) - The unlikely image of Li Peng, the dour Premier of the People's Republic of China, trekking across Tibet astride a shaggy yak and wearing a yellow-fringed monk's bonnet came irrepressibly to mind last week when Chinese Communist Party leaders substituted a six-year-old child of their own choosing for the one who had been sanctified by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the tenth Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-most-important monk. Soon after the Panchen Lama's death, in 1989, the abbot from Tashi Lhunpo, the Panchen Lama s home monastery, began a search for his replacement. According to Tibetan Buddhist custom, after a wait of several years for the consciousness of a departed trulku, or "reincarnation of a high lama," to appear in mortal form, a clerical search committee is appointed and then, guided by dreams, omens, oracles, and prophetic visions, sets off to find the child in whose corporeal form the departed consciousness has been reborn.

Since the People's Liberation Army s occupation of Lhasa, in 1959, the Communist Party has suppressed all such arcane practices as "feudal" and "reactionary," and it has been difficult for the Buddhists to undertake the search for reincarnations. As a result, most monasteries have been left without replacements for their most important religious figures. When Party leaders grudgingly approved the quest for the new Panchen Lama, their intention was to keep firm control of the process. They were therefore infuriated when the list of candidates, instead of being passed directly on to Beijing for approval, was evidently leaked by the search committee to the exiled Dalai Lama, who, exercising one of his traditional religious prerogatives, designated Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the six-year-old son of a Nagqu District herdsman, as the next Panchen Lama. "Recognition is a religious matter, and not political," the Dalai Lama declared. "It is my hope that the Chinese government will extend its understanding, cooperation, a

nd assistance."

Instead, Party leaders condemned his choice, took the young Gedhun into custody, detained the abbot of Tashi Lhunpo, and then dragooned seventy-five hapless Tibetan Buddhist leaders into rushing to Beijing. Once there, they were lectured by President Jiang Zemin, forced to reject the Dalai Lama's choice as a "fraud," and compelled to prepare another list of children--from which a new candidate would be chosen by lot in Lhasa--for submission directly to the State Council and Premier Li Peng.

The idea that the premier of an atheistic "people s republic"--a Soviet-trained hydroelectric engineer who is best known for his decision to order martial law against student demonstrators in 1989--should become involved in one of the more mystical practices of Tibetan Buddhism is, of course, ludicrous. But because Beijing's actions risk provoking the kind of pro-independence demonstrations that have so often rocked Tibet in the past, they are also extremely dangerous. Tibetans have repeatedly risked imprisonment, forced labor, torture, and even execution by taking to the streets against their Chinese overlords. Yet in doing so, as the Dalai Lama lamented when he was awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, "they are facing the real possibility of elimination as a people and a nation."

With the exiled Dalai Lama unable to intervene on behalf of his people and with Communist Party leaders unwilling even to talk with him about compromise, Tibetans are left confronting a painful paradox: While most countries lack leaders of real moral stature, they have a leader with enormous stature but no country. If China's policies don't change, Tibet may soon be without a functioning religion and a culture as well.