China is accelerating an elaborate strategy to co-opt the reincarnation of one of the world’s best-loved and most deeply revered spiritual leaders, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

In a new 30-page report, ‘Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and the Geopolitics of Reincarnation’, researchers found evidence of China’s plans to use the passing of His Holiness as a ‘strategic’ and ‘historic’ opportunity for Beijing to end international support for Tibet.

Two, previously unseen, influential Chinese policy documents reveal an ominous strategy designed to appropriate and control matters at the heart of Tibetan religious identity and target not only the Tibetan people but also the broader international community as a means to “secure authority in Tibet and build influence across the Tibetan Buddhist world.”

A duel of political and religious forces are being mapped out by China and set the stage for an intensifying geopolitical power contest that has largely been overlooked and is linked to Beijing’s elaborate plans to install an imposter Dalai Lama.