In his newly published memoir, the Dalai Lama chronicles his 70-year struggle with China to secure a future for the Tibetan people.
In “Voice for the Voiceless: Over Seven Decades of Struggle with China for My Land and My People,” the Dalai Lama shares his experiences since assuming the leadership of Tibet at the age of 16 before he fled into exile in India.
The Tibetan spiritual leader also describes negotiating with a series of Chinese leaders, from Mao Zedong, to his more recent attempts to communicate with President Xi Jinping.
In an excerpt published here with permission from the publisher HarperCollins, the Dalai Lama says China’s government could make Tibetans feel welcome within the People’s Republic of China, but instead communist rule remains that of an “oppressive occupying power.”
He also rejects Chinese involvement in the selection of the next Dalai Lama and says whoever that is “will be born in the free world.”
If Beijing were to look at past history, it would see that policies of repression and forced assimilation do not actually work. It is, in fact, counterproductive, with the main result being the creation of generations deeply resentful of Communist China’s presence on the Tibetan plateau.
If the Chinese leadership truly cares about a stable and harmonious country wherein the Tibetan people could feel at home, its policies need to be grounded in respect for the dignity of Tibetans and to take serious note of their fundamental aspiration to thrive as a people with a distinct language, culture, and religion.
If, in the end, Beijing deems our foundational objective to be incompatible within the framework of the People’s Republic of China, then the issue of Tibet will remain intractable for generations. I have always stated that, in the end, it is the Tibetan people who should decide their own fate. Not the Dalai Lama or, for that matter, the Beijing leadership.
The simple fact is no one likes their home being taken over by uninvited guests with guns. This is nothing but human nature.
I, for one, do not believe it would be so difficult for the Chinese government to make the Tibetans feel welcome and happy within the family of the People’s Republic of China. Like all people, Tibetans would like to be respected, have agency within their own home, and have the freedom to be who they are. The aspirations and the needs of the Tibetan people cannot be met simply through economic development.
At its core, the issue is not about bread and butter. It is about the very survival of Tibetans as a people. Finding a resolution of the Tibetan issue would undoubtedly have great benefits for the People’s Republic of China.
First and foremost, it would confer legitimacy to China’s presence on the Tibetan plateau, essential for the status and stability of the People’s Republic of China as a modern country composed of multiple nationalities willingly joined in a single family.
In the case of Tibet, for instance, it has now been more than seventy years since Communist China’s invasion in 1950. Despite the physical control of the country, through brutal force as well as economic inducements, the Tibetan people’s resentment, persistent resistance in various forms, and moments of significant uprising have never gone away.
Even though generations and economic conditions have changed, very little has changed when it comes to the Tibetan people’s perception and attitude toward those they still view as occupiers. The simple fact is that insofar as the Tibetans on the ground are concerned, the Communist Chinese rule in Tibet remains that of a foreign, unwanted, and oppressive occupying power.
The Tibetan people have lost so much. Their homeland has been forcibly invaded and remains under a suffocating rule. The Tibetan language, culture, and religion are under systematic attack through coercive policies of assimilation. Even the very expression of Tibetanness is increasingly being perceived as a threat “to the unity of the motherland.”
The only leverage the Tibetan people have left is the moral rightness of their cause and the power of truth. The simple fact is Tibet today remains an occupied territory, and it is only the Tibetan people who can confer or deny legitimacy to the presence of China on the Tibetan plateau.
All my life I have advocated for nonviolence. I have done my utmost to restrain the understandable impulses of frustrated Tibetans, both within and outside Tibet.
Especially, ever since our direct conversations after my exile began with Beijing in 1979, I have used all my moral authority and leverage with the Tibetan people, persuading them to seek a realistic solution in the form of a genuine autonomy within the framework of the People’s Republic of China.
I must admit I remain deeply disappointed that Beijing has chosen not to acknowledge this huge accommodation on the part of the Tibetans, and has failed to capitalize on the genuine potential it offered to come to a lasting solution.
At the time of publishing this book, I will be approaching my ninetieth year. If no resolution is found while I am alive, the Tibetan people, especially those inside Tibet, will blame the Chinese leadership and the Communist Party for its failure to reach a settlement with me; many Chinese too, especially Buddhists - some people told me that there are more than two hundred million in mainland China who self-identify as Buddhists - will be disappointed with their government for its failure to solve a problem whose solution has been staring at them for so long.
Given my age, understandably many Tibetans are concerned about what will happen when I am no more. On the political front of our campaign for the freedom of the Tibetan people, we now have a substantial population of Tibetans outside in the free world, so our struggle will go on, no matter what.
Furthermore, as far as the day-to-day leadership of our movement is concerned, we now have both an elected executive in the office of the Sikyong (president of the Central Tibetan Administration) and a well-established Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile.
People have often asked me if there will be a next Dalai Lama.
As early as the 1960s, I have expressed that whether the Dalai Lama institution should continue or not is a matter for the Tibetan people.
So if the Tibetan people feel that the institution has served its purpose and there is now no longer any need for a Dalai Lama, then the institution will cease. In which case, I would be the last Dalai Lama, I have stated. I have also said that if there is continued need, then there will be the Fifteenth Dalai Lama. In particular, in 2011, I convened a gathering of the leaders of all major Tibetan religious traditions, and at the conclusion of this meeting, I issued a formal statement in which I stated that when I turn ninety, I will consult the high lamas of the Tibetan religious traditions as well as the Tibetan public, and if there is a consensus that the Dalai Lama institution should continue, then formal responsibility for the recognition of the Fifteenth Dalai Lama should rest with the Gaden Phodrang Trust (the Office of the Dalai Lama).
The Gaden Phodrang Trust should follow the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past Tibetan Buddhist tradition, including, especially, consulting the oath-bound Dharma protectors* historically connected with the lineage of the Dalai Lamas, as was followed carefully in my own case. On my part, I stated that I will also leave clear written instructions on this.
For more than a decade now, I have received numerous petitions and letters from a wide spectrum of Tibetan people—senior lamas from the various Tibetan traditions, abbots of monasteries, diaspora Tibetan communities across the world, and many prominent and ordinary Tibetans inside Tibet—as well as Tibetan Buddhist communities from the Himalayan region and Mongolia, uniformly asking me to ensure that the Dalai Lama lineage be continued.
In the official statement I issued in 2011, I also pointed out that it is totally inappropriate for Chinese Communists, who explicitly reject religion, including the idea of past and future lives, to meddle in the system of reincarnation of lamas, let alone that of the Dalai Lama.
Such meddling, I pointed out, contradicts their own political ideology and only reveals their double standards. Elsewhere, half joking, I have remarked that before Communist China gets involved in the business of recognizing the reincarnation of lamas, including the Dalai Lama, it should first recognize the reincarnations of its past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping!
In summing up my thoughts on the question of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama in that 2011 official statement, I urged that unless the recognition of the next Dalai Lama is done through traditional Tibetan Buddhist methods, no acceptance should be given by the Tibetan people and Tibetan Buddhists across the world to a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China.
Now, since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama — that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people — will continue.
Copyright @ 2025 by the Dalai Lama. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.