The Central Tibetan Administration has denounced China’s appointment of the sixth incarnation of the Gyalrong Dedrug Rinpoche, a senior religious figure associated with Tibet’s Drepung Monastery, as politically motivated.

Four-year-old Losang Doje was selected in a lot-drawing ceremony presided over by Gyaincain Norbu, the Chinese appointed 11th Panchen Lama, who was selected in a similar fashion himself 15 years ago. The ceremony was conducted in Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple on 4 July.

For Tibetans it is the latest incident in a bizarre Chinese effort to increase Communist Party control over the region by supplanting the traditional Tibetan religious hierarchy. The Central Tibetan Administration’s Department of Religion and Culture has reacted strongly to this latest turn of events, stating that the appointment “goes against religion” and that “no Tibetan will ever accept this”.

What began in 1995 with the abduction of Gedun Choekyi Nyima, the boy recognized by the Dalai Lama as the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama, has become a systematic program to control the appointment of religious leaders, ensuring only individuals amenable to Beijing’s policies are installed. In August 2007 the Chinese Government announced new laws stating that all reincarnated lamas (tulkus) must have government approval.

News of Losang Doje’s appointment came during a week that also saw China re-assert its intention to select the next Dalai Lama and new details emerge surrounding it’s hijacking of the selection of the Panchen Lama back in 1995.

Reporting from Shigtase, home of Tashilumpo Monastery and the Panchen Lamas, The Sydney Morning Herald’s John Garnaut filed a revealing story on 3 July in which he draws from a series of damning internal documents recently translated and examined by Robbie Barnett, director of Columbia University’s Modern Tibetan Studies Program (In Search of the Real Panchen Lama).

According to Garnaut, the documents, the contents of which have never before been reported, lay out in “cold and brutal detail” how Chinese officials rigged the selection process and then set about manufacturing consent for their state-imposed Panchen Lama.

Among other things the 1994 papers show Chen Kuiyuan, Communist Party boss in Tibet, requesting Chadrel Rinpoche, the abbot of Tashilumpo Monastery, be “kept” in Beijing for up to 15 days while Chen’s team worked more pliable leaders of the monastery. Chen later stated “we should mobilize the healthy forces within the monastery to have a showdown in the committee and reach a consensus with pressure”. The following year, having built up the support he needed, Chen purged the remaining dissidents from the monastery.

China still needed to create the illusion that it was adhering to tradition. For this it revived an obscure Qing Dynasty ritual in which the winning candidate is selected by drawing lots from a golden urn. A monk involved in the process later conceded that is was rigged and that four-year-old Gyaincain Norbu had already been chosen by communist authorities as the 11th Panchen Lama. The same golden urn process was used on 4 July to select Losang Doje as the sixth Gyalrong Dedrug Rinpoche. According to Garnaut, China has stated openly its intention to use this “quasi-historical, pseudo-religious Communist Party ritual” to select and impose a future Dalai Lama.

The abduction on 17 May 1995 of six-year-old of Gedun Choekyi Nyima remains a gaping wound on the Tibetan psyche. China has resisted all requests from concerned governments, international bodies and the Tibetan community for verifiable information on his whereabouts and wellbeing. Meanwhile China has been busy creating a Panchen Lama of its own. After 15 years of secretive training, this year Beijing has been testing out the credibility of Gyaincain Norbu among Tibetans. Earlier this year Gyaincain Norbu toured quake-stricken Kyegudo and more recently made his first visit to his home monastery in Shigatse. The new director of Tashilumpo Monastery’s “democratic management committee” revealed to Garnaut that Gyaincain Norbu would soon be making the monastery his winter home.

“The basic theory is based on a much earlier imperial tradition that you can’t rule a place where people are so different unless you have a local proxy ruler who can say, ‘I invited the Chinese and we are all very happy’,” according to Robbie Barnett, cited in Garnaut’s story.

Monks who capitulated to China’s scheme have been rewarded with the renovation of their monastery and promises of further assistance from the Party. Gedun Choekyi Nyima, his family, Chadrel Rinpoche and about 30 colleagues have simply disappeared.

Nonetheless, as reported in our special feature on the fifteenth anniversary of the abduction of Gedun Choekyi Nyima (Panchen Lama 15 Years And Still No Answers) there are signs that China, unsurprisingly, faces a mammoth crisis of credibility with Gyaincin Norbu. Around that time ANU’s Professor John Powers recalled the reverence towards Gedun Choekyi Nyima that he’d observed while in Tibet and the contempt towards his substitute.

To the vast majority of Tibetans and Tibet supporters China’s strategy of controlling the appointment of religious leaders is not only an affront but utterly untenable. Most independent commentators on Tibet find the idea that the Tibetan people might one day accept a state-imposed Dalai Lama absurd. China, the argument goes, has a far better shot of reaching peace with the Tibetan people by working constructively with the present Dalai Lama. It is highly unlikely, indeed inconceivable, that another leader will emerge, either among Tibetans or at the imposition of the Chinese Government, with both the necessary sway over the Tibetan people and a willingness to make such deep compromises in search of a resolution.