China's best hopes of installing a pro-Beijing substitute for the Dalai Lama at the head of Tibetan Buddhism lay in ruins yesterday after an epic flight to India by Tibet's third highest-ranking lama, the 14-year-old Karmapa Lama.
The youth escaped from a Tibetan monastery where he was under close guard and reached India after a trek of 1,400km from his monastery near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. After travelling on foot through winter snows and extreme cold, the fugitive lama and four attendants arrived in Dharamsala on January 5th and met the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.
The boy, born Ugyen Trinley Dorje, is unique in the struggle between Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese communism as he is the only lama approved by both sides.
In a once-off agreement, the exiled Dalai Lama and Beijing concurred with the choice of the boy as the 17th reincarnation of the Karmapa Lama in 1992.
Since then Beijing has been grooming him as a "patriotic" lama, whose loyalty would counter 50 years of opposition to Chinese rule in Tibet. It staged events in Beijing, where he was reported to have prayed for the soul of Chairman Mao Zedong and pledged allegiance to the Communist Party.
The Karmapa Lama represented China's best chance of a sympathetic substitute for the 64-year-old Dalai Lama after his death. Beijing and the Dalai Lama attempted similar co-operation over the search for the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second-highest lama.
But relations broke down and each side chose a different boy in 1995. The Dalai Lama, who advocates peaceful progress towards an autonomous Tibet, is now condemned regularly by China as a "splittist" and a secret advocate of violence.
The Dalai Lama's choice for Panchen Lama, now 10, and his family have not been seen in public since 1995 and are believed to be under house arrest. Beijing's choice was installed in Tashi Lhunpo monastery in Shigatse, but is not recognised by many Tibetans.
After news broke that the Karmapa Lama had reached India, China acknowledged his departure and suggested he could return. The official Xinhua news agency said he left behind a letter saying he did not mean to betray "the state, the nation, the monastery or the leadership".
The letter said the boy faced a rival claimant in the north Indian state of Sikkim, and had gone to get musical instruments and black hats used by previous reincarnations of the Karmapa Lama.
The Dalai Lama's office in New Delhi declined to comment yesterday on his shock arrival in India, but some Tibet experts said the boy appeared to have fled into exile in a repeat of the Dalai Lama's escape to India in 1959 following an abortive uprising nine years after Chinese communist troops took over the region.
News of his dramatic flight came in the same week as China authorised the ordination of five new Catholic bishops in a parallel attempt to establish Chinese religious leaders loyal to Beijing.
Mr Tenzin Chonyi, the former personal attendant of the 16th Karmapa Lama who fled Tibet in 1959 with the Dalai Lama, described the event as a miracle. "We know the Karmapa is in Dharamsala and that he has met the Dalai Lama," he said. "We're all in a state of shock, but we're very joyful."
Born to nomadic parents in 1985 in eastern Tibet, Dorje leads the Karma Kagyupa, or "Black Hat" sect, one of the four great sects of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1992, monks guided by a letter written by the previous Karmapa Lama found him in a nomad camp. The authenticity of the letter is at the centre of a bitter dispute among Tibetan monks, which resulted in the appointment of a rival Karmapa Lama in Sikkim.
The Kagyu order has an international following and is reputedly very wealthy. Some members of the Kagyu sect said the boy had wanted to go to India for some time to collect the black hats and musical instruments, because they were crucial symbols of his office and possession would undermine the rival claimant. Mr Richard Oppenheimer, of the London-based Tibet Information Network, said a severe security crackdown appeared inevitable in Tibet.