BEIJING, July 5 (Reuter) - A top official in China's Tibet region has called on the restive area to use the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule to fight Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Beijing's resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong after 156 years of British colonial rule showed that attempts to fracture China went against the trend of history, the Tibet Daily said in an edition seen in Beijing on Saturday.

"Through welcoming the return of Hong Kong, we must more clearly identify the true reactionary nature of the Dalai clique's splitting the motherland," the newspaper's June 26 edition quoted Tibet's deputy Communist Party secretary Baseng as saying.

The handover should teach Tibet to "uphold with a resolute stance the banner of patriotism and carry out to the end the struggle against the Dalai clique's splittist activities," Baseng was quoted as saying.

Beijing took control of Hong Kong at midnight on June 30 under a 1984 treaty with Britain, and China's ruling Communist Party has eagerly used the handover to boost patriotic sentiment and bolster its position.

In a separate report in the newspaper, Tibet deputy secretary Raidi blasted the Dalai Lama for destroying proper religious life in the region and leading monks to go to bars and keep stashes of pornography.

"Some temples, monks and nuns have been corrupted by the reactionary thought of the Dalai's splittist clique and have violated religious tenets and disrupted the normal religious order," the newspaper quoted Raidi as saying.

Some members of Tibet's Buddhist clergy had become decadent under the influence of the Dalai Lama, who was working to split Tibet from the rest of China with the help of hostile foreign forces, Raidi said.

"Some monks wear robes during the day, then don Western clothes in the evening and go to karaoke bars, while some monks have hidden wigs and pictures of naked women in their quarters." He said Tibet had prospered under communist rule and government control was necessary to maintain stability and development in the region, which has been sporadically rocked by anti-Beijing violence.

"A small number of people are preaching 'Tibetan independence', disrupting Tibet's stability and obstructing the development and advancement of Tibet," he said.

"The people's government, at the request of the masses, has stepped up management of temples, monks and nuns in accordance with the law, and has carried out patriotic and legal education to build a normal religious order," he said.

China's state media has in recent weeks fired repeated propaganda salvos at the Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent campaign for more autonomy for Tibet.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against communist rule, of seeking to split Tibet from the rest of China and whipping up anti-Chinese sentiment in the Himalayan region.

The Dalai Lama says harsh government and Chinese immigration are eroding Tibet's ethnic majority and culture but that he hopes only for genuine autonomy for his mountainous homeland.