BEIJING, 03/09 (AP)--In his first official religious duties, the 6-year-old boy China has designated as Tibet's second-highest spiritual leader received worshipers at a Buddhist temple in Beijing on Saturday.

Gyaltsen Norbu, the 6-year-old boy Beijing installed as the 11th Panchen Lama, greeted Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leaders and a great number of believers, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The boy at the center of the struggle between the exiled Dalai Lama and China's Communist leaders for the loyalties of the fervently Buddhist Tibetans arrived at the Xihuang Temple to a clamor of trumpets and drums, the report said.

It said the boy was "full of vigor and showed a solemn expression."

Among his admirers was the 80-year-old mother of the 10th Panchen Lama, who China says has been reincarnated as the boy.

The Panchen Lama is the second highest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism.

After a failed uprising against Chinese rule forced the Dalai Lama into exile in 1959, the Panchen Lama became the most senior monk to remain in Tibet.

China's candidate for Panchen Lama has begun studies that will "turn him into a real Buddhist," Xinhua said.

A senior official said Friday that another 6-year-old boy named by the Dalai Lama as the Panchen Lama but rejected by the Chinese was healthy and was not in jail, contrary to speculation by Tibetans in exile that he may be in detention or even dead.

China's military entered Tibet in 1950, although it claims its sovereignty over the restive Himalayan region stretches back 700 years.