Dalai Lama's Taiwan visit upsets China

The Dalai Lama has attempted to downplay the political significance of his Taiwan visit.

In this story: Beijing warnings Religion first RELATED STORIES

By staff and wire reports

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, The Dalai Lama, will begin a visit to Taiwan on Saturday despite Chinese protests.

In his second visit to Taiwan, the 14th Dalai Lama will meet President Chen Shui-bian and former president Lee Teng-hui, in a trip some politicians say is bound to strain the island's already tense dealings with mainland China.

Beijing, which considers Taiwan and Tibet integral parts of China, has already warned of the visit's "serious consequences", accusing the Dalai Lama of colluding with Taiwanese separatists.

The Dalai Lama has tried to play down the political significance of his visit, but Taipei-based Andrew Yang of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies says the meeting of Taiwan pro-independence leaders "is bound to have some political implications".

"Although the Dalai Lama has reiterated it is a religious visit, it does show that he is in close ties with the incumbent Taiwan government which China dislikes," he told CNN.com.

The globetrotting Buddhist monk has dismissed Chinese accusations he wants to split Tibet from China, while Chen has mellowed his pro-independence stand.

Taiwan Vice President Annette Lu said the island's ties with rival China would enter a "sensitive period" due in part to the Tibetan spiritual leader's visit.

Beijing condemned a meeting of the two countries when the Dalai Lama first visited in 1997 as a collusion of "splittists."

Beijing warnings

The State-controlled People's Daily newspaper said in its overseas edition that the visit is "a further step made by the Taiwan authorities and the Dalai Lama clique to divide the motherland by colluding with each other".

Sun Yafu, deputy director of the Chinese cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office, says the Taiwan authorities "will have to take responsibility for the serious after-effects resulting from agreeing to the Dalai Lama's visit to Taiwan".

CNN.com senior China analyst Willy Lam says Beijing views the Dalai Lama's visit as further proof of the existence of a global anti-China conspiracy between the pro-independence movements in Taiwan and Tibet, the Falun Gong, and so-called anti-China elements in the United States.

Religion first

Meanwhile, most ordinary Taiwanese people are simply waiting for the Tibetan Buddhism's top monk to arrive.

Wealthy but diplomatically isolated Taiwan has about 30,000 followers of Tibetan Buddhism, who showered the Dalai Lama with US$500,000 during his last visit.

"We are neither playing the Taiwan independence nor the Tibetan independence card," said Hsu Szu-chien, a China policy adviser to President Chen's Democratic Progressive Party.

"For ordinary people, the Dalai Lama's visit has greater religious significance than political," Hsu said.

The Dalai Lama will hold mass "enlightenment" lectures across the island and Vice President Lu is to attend one of them in the capital on Monday.

The vice president will launch a "Send Taiwan's Love to Tibet" drive to raise $150,000 (T$5 million) for a school for the disabled in the Tibetan capital of Dharamshala.

The Dalai Lama fled his Himalayan homeland after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, and won the Nobel Peace Prize three decades later for his peaceful campaign for autonomy.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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