Canberra, March 31 (CNA) As Tibetans continue to flee to India, mainland China is expected to worry more about Hollywood films on the life and times of the Dalai Lama than his meetings with President Lee Teng-hui in Taiwan and Prime Minister John Howard in Australia, according to the Sydney Morning Herald Monday.

In a dispatch from Beijing, Herald correspondent David Lague reported that Hollywood is about to issue four movies about Tibet or the Dalai Lama.

Lague reported that an increasing number of Hollywood stars are joining longtime crusader and Buddhist Richard Gere to protest mainland Chinese repression in Tibet. They include names such as Harrison Ford, Sharon Stone, Steven Seagal and Shirley MacLaine, according to the daily.

"This should worry Beijing more than meetings with Lee Teng-hui or John Howard, because the last thing the Beijing leadership needs is more US public pressure on Washington to take a stronger stand on human rights," the daily reported.

The Dalai Lama met President Lee in Taiwan last week and he also met with Howard when he visited Australia last September.

"It seems (mainland) China is preparing a counterattack on the (US) film studios, with reports that Disney has been warned that its ambitious plans to expand its business in mainland China would be at risk if it went ahead with the Martin Scorsese-directed "Kundun," a film about the Dalai Lama's early life.

The Herald reported that Beijing has denied pressuring Disney. However, top Hollywood names, including Harrison Ford and his wife, Melissa Mathieson, who wrote the script for "Kundun," actor Brad Pitt, Scorsese and fellow director Jean-Jacques Annaud, are already on a mainland Chinese blacklist of 50 people barred from visiting Tibet.

Annaud is currently filming "Seven Years in Tibet" starring Brad Pitt and based on the true story of an Austrian prisoner of war who escaped from India in World War II and reached Lhasa, where he came under the influence of the young Dalai Lama.

"If any of these films capture the public imagination, the smiling splittist (Dalai Lama) is likely to become a household name outside the community he prays to rejoin," the daily reported.

"Beijing will be paying unusual attention to the box office in the months ahead," the daily added. (By Peter Chen)