This week, the Dalai Lama celebrated his 91st birthday. Given his advancing years, inevitably questions are being asked about who his 15th re-incarnation will be – and no one is more interested than China’s autocratic ruler, Xi Jinping.

When in July last year the man born as Tenzin Gyatso in 1935 announced that his reincarnation as Dalai Lama would be found according to the traditional methods, the Chinese Communist Party was incensed.

Any decision was for central government to decide, they insisted. The selection process (which only begins after the Dalai Lama’s death) had to use the “golden urn” lot-drawing method – where one of three pre-selected candidates is chosen using ivory tallies pulled from said vessel.

The Dalai Lama has rejected this, both because it has no part in the tradition – it was introduced by the Qing empire during its colonisation of Tibet in the 18th century – and because the result would be no less rigged than China’s own so-called elections.

It is almost farcical that an avowedly atheist regime, which bans officials from being religious believers, should be so obsessed with something so inherently spiritual. But farce and irony aside, the reincarnation is no laughing matter.

The traditional, centuries-old, method of finding the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation involves a search committee poring over sacred texts, and consulting omens, oracles and visions as they identify a few small children. These candidates will then be tested to see whether they recognise objects which belonged to the previous Dalai Lama.

The process is a lengthy one, and is followed by more than 15 years of training and tuition for the chosen child. A regent acts on their behalf until they reach adulthood.

But, with China’s interference, there will likely be two Dalai Lamas. The “official” Chinese one (chosen with the golden urn method) will be tightly controlled by the CCP and roundly rejected by Tibetans. This is what happened with Tibet’s second highest religious figure, the Panchen Lama.

In 1995 the boy identified by the Dalai Lama as the new reincarnation of the Panchen Lama and his family were immediately “disappeared”. Thirty years later, they remain political prisoners. The CCP paraded its own candidate, who commanded no respect.

Why is an increasingly frail man and an as yet undiscovered child such a threat to the CCP? One factor is that controlling Tibet itself has become more important to the Party.

The border with India has always been geopolitically sensitive. Now China seeks to expand the size of its colony by claiming the Indian province of Arunachal Pradesh as “South Tibet”.

Another factor is the development of ultra-high voltage transmission technology, enabling Tibet’s solar and dam-powered electricity to be sent to China. Tibet also possesses an abundance of deposits of certain minerals crucial to the modern world.

So that’s why this 91-year-old man is indeed threatening. Globally, there are few, if any, figures who can command the respect accorded to the Dalai Lama.

Inside Tibet, he is on a pedestal from which no amount of Party propaganda can knock him. He is more than just the embodiment of their religion. He is the symbol reminding Tibetans of their colonisation by China and of their hope for future freedom.

Since the invasion and colonisation of Tibet in 1950, when nearly half of its territory and population were carved off and incorporated into neighbouring Chinese provinces, the CCP has been desperate to combat the Dalai Lama’s “soft power”.

After the violence of the early years and especially the cultural revolution, when many Tibetan temples were dynamited (a Chinese scholar in Beijing in the 1980s tried to persuade me that this destruction was the result of the British 1905 expedition into Tibet and claimed that photographs I showed him of later date were fakes), the CCP hoped that economic improvement and political indoctrination would gradually lead to the assimilation of its Tibetan colony into China and the demise of religion.

But resistance, resentment and the power of religion in Tibet remain strong. For Tibetans, the Dalai Lama’s words are the words of God, hence the need for the CCP to control his next incarnation.

Xi is a man of impatience. Economic prosperity and modernisation have not led quickly enough to Tibetan assimilation.

A new policy followed the 2014 “Central Ethnic Work Conference”, characterised by the euphemistic idea of “ethnic mingling”, much broader surveillance, and tougher suppression. The “sinicisation of religion” (forcing all religious groups to conform to Chinese state doctrine), along with the elimination of Tibetan language teaching and other measures to suppress Tibet’s culture followed.

This year a new Ethnic Unity Law has extended China’s legal reach to people abroad. Clause 63 lays down that those outside China who criticise or undermine ethnic unity can be legally pursued. Presumably, that includes this commentary.

The Dalai Lama’s reincarnation then will affect us all. First in the firing line is India, since it is most likely that it is there that the child will be found. If not there, perhaps Nepal, Bhutan or even Mongolia, where links to Tibetan Buddhism have historically been strong.

These and other Buddhist countries in the region will come under severe pressure from the CCP to recognise Beijing’s reincarnation, not the Tibetan choice. Relations with the United States of America will suffer. Its Tibetan Policy and Support Act lays down sanctions on any Chinese official who interferes in the reincarnation process.

And how will the Government in Britain react to an increase in Chinese transnational repression here during the last days of the Dalai Lama and the years following, when Beijing applies pressure to support its candidate over the Tibetan one?

What will the Government do when the CCP violently suppresses the inevitable protests in Tibet, Qinghai, and other provinces which have swallowed up so many Tibetans?

More from Charles Parton

The Government ought to have a plan on the stocks for how it will react. It almost certainly does not, given that it has no wider China strategy. It is even possible that it might need a plan for the Dalai Lama reincarnating in the UK.

Only around half a per cent of the 150,000 Tibetan diaspora lives here. So the odds are small, but the Dalai Lama is known for his impish sense of humour.