The pre-Communist government of China already exerted pressure on the Tibetans (1952)

1952 The pre-Communist government of China already exerted pressure on the Tibetans and intervened in the choice of the 10th Panchen Lama. At the end of the 1930s/beginning of the 1940s the Tibetans wanted to appoint another boy as the Panchen Lama. They have already brought the person in question to Lhasa. Upon the pressure of the Kuomintagng-party (Republic of China), which then ruled in Amdo/Xinghai, they were imposed another child-candidate. After some back and forth this boy (Chökyi Gyaltsen, 1938 -1989) was enthroned as the official Panchen Lama in Jun 1949 – but not in Lhasa but in the Kumbum-monastery in the furthest Northeast of Amdo, which was governed by China. A couple of months later – the Communists have already seized the region – the 10th Panchen Lama was politically misused by them: On October 1, 1949, in his name congratulatory telegrams were sent to the new Communist governance in Beijing, in which the 11-years-old boy welcomed the overthrow and expressed the expectation that Tibet soon will be “liberated”. The child who should have been actually appointed as the 10th Panchen Lama later became a great scholar under the name Panchen Otrul Rinpochen (otrul = candidate). He still lives in Ireland.