Chinese bureaucracy excels at record-keeping, and the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official atheism isn’t preventing the latest effort in meticulous documentation. Earlier this month, the Chinese government announced that Beijing would be compiling a database of the nearly 360 “living Buddhas” — holy men considered reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist luminaries — who are resident in China.
The State Administration for Religious Affairs, which has charged itself with compiling the living-Buddha database, did not respond to written questions from TIME. But the database announcement follows the issuing in September of a government white paper reiterating that Beijing “has undeniable endorsement right on the reincarnation system” of living Buddhas. A Chinese state media report said the spiritual cataloging, which will be available online, is designed to prevent the rise of unscrupulous pseudo living Buddhas who lure followers without proper religious credentials. Concern has grown because Tibetan Buddhism has gained a growing following among members of China’s Han majority, who are drawn by the sense of religious purity emanating from the Tibetan high plateau. (Locals, meanwhile, complain that an aggressive police presence in Tibet means they cannot access some of their holiest sites as freely as Han tourists can.)
The Chinese government’s self-declared right to choose living Buddhas extends to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. The current Dalai Lama, considered the 14th reincarnation of a 15th century abbot, has lived in exile since a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Although the now 80-year-old monk has consistently called for meaningful autonomy for Tibet, as opposed to outright independence, Beijing considers the Dalai Lama a dangerous separatist and accuses him of orchestrating deadly 2008 protests across the Tibetan plateau, as well as the more than 130 self-immolations by Tibetans over the past few years — charges he rejects.
Traditionally, the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is chosen by a coterie of high lamas, as senior Tibetan Buddhist monks are known. But the Communist Party now considers reincarnation one of its official duties. “This living-Buddha database and the whole policy toward reincarnation is clearly a preemptive move by the government to control what happens after this Dalai Lama,” says Nicholas Bequelin, regional director for East Asia at Amnesty International, who has tracked Tibetan topics for years. “They want to get ahead of the issue and prepare the ground for when….
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