BEIJING — China and the United States have worked out a reliable pas de deux over the Dalai Lama, the Nobel laureate and Tibetan spiritual leader, whom Beijing sometimes describes as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
It goes like this: Chinese leaders warn the White House against granting the Dalai Lama a public audience, and the American president either ignores the threats of diplomatic fallout or finds a way to hold a meeting that will result in the least offense to Beijing.
Since taking office, President Obama has met with the Dalai Lama on three occasions, each time within the privacy of the White House rather than during the kind of public event that might prompt outsize indignation on the part of Chinese leaders.
Then, on Thursday, Mr. Obama was handed a diplomatically novel way to express his admiration for the Dalai Lama when the two exchanged greetings at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington and the president described him as a “good friend.”
Video footage of the event showed Mr. Obama clasping his hands in a gesture of reverence and then waving at the Dalai Lama with a broad smile. In a speech, he described the 79-year-old exiled Buddhist leader as a “powerful example of what it means to practice compassion,” one “who inspired us to speak up for the freedom and dignity of all human beings.”
The highly public episode infuriated Beijing, which accused Mr. Obama of cynically orchestrating the encounter and suggested it was designed to complicate China’s governance of Tibet, the vast, strategically pivotal region that has bridled at Beijing’s heavy-handed rule since Communist troops invaded in 1950.
“The Dalai Lama has over a long period of time used the banner of religion to engage in separatist, anti-Chinese activities as a political exile,” Hong Lei, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said during a regular news conference on Friday. “We oppose any foreign country allowing the Dalai Lama to visit, and oppose any country using the issue of Tibet to interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
In a commentary Friday, the state-run news agency Xinhua was more colorful. “This action by the U.S. to ‘drive a nail’ into the hearts of the Chinese people is harmful to the political trust between the two countries, and it is harmful to the premise and foundation of both sides building a new relationship,” it said.
China typically reacts with petulance when a foreign leader meets the Dalai Lama, who is admired across much of the world but loathed by the Communist Party. China frequently accuses the Dalai Lama of promoting Tibetan independence, although he has repeatedly said he seeks only the autonomy long promised by Beijing.
In recent years, as its economic and diplomatic stature has grown, China has had increasing success in persuading countries to publicly snub the Tibetan spiritual leader and, in some cases, deny him a visa.
But China’s latest effort to discourage an encounter between the Dalai Lama and Mr. Obama appears to have been doomed from the start, given the public nature of the event, to which both men were invited guests.
In a commentary published shortly before the event, Xinhua warned Mr. Obama against doing anything that might be interpreted as demonstrating respect for the Dalai Lama. “Chumming with a secessionist is playing with fire, which severely harms the mutual trust between China and the United States, and downgrades Obama’s credit as a national leader for breaking his commitments to China on the Tibet issue,” it said.
Robert J. Barnett, director of the Modern Tibet Studies Program at Columbia University, said the White House had outmaneuvered China by declining to grant the Dalai Lama an official audience during his visit to Washington but demonstrating the president’s support through a public encounter that would resonate with rights advocates and Tibetan exile groups.
Although China’s forceful and florid protests are largely aimed at showing its resolve to a domestic audience, Mr. Barnett said its public statements were unbecoming of a world power. “It makes them look tetchy and unreasonable,” he said, “and in the end, the Chinese allowed the Americans to walk them into a situation that doesn’t look good.”
If previous presidential meetings with the Dalai Lama are any guide, the harm to United States-China relations from the event on Thursday will be negligible. Still, Shi Yinhong, director of the Center for American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said that Chinese leaders believed they had no choice but to draw semantic lines in the sand. “If China doesn’t protest, then many other leaders would meet up with the Dalai Lama, and that would have a negative impact on our efforts to bring stability to Tibet,” he said.
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