Early Life and Selection
The 10th Panchen Lama was born Gonpo Tseten on 19 February 1938 in today's Xunhua Salar Autonomous County of Qinghai, to Gonpo Tseten and Sonam Drolma. When the Ninth Panchen Lama died in 1937, two simultaneous searches for the tenth Panchen Lama produced two competing candidates, with the government in Lhasa (who had selected a boy from Xikang) and the Ninth Panchen Lama's officials (who picked Tseten) in conflict. The Republic of China government, then embroiled in the Chinese Civil War, declared its support for Tseten on 3 June 1949, and flew Guan Jiyu, the head of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, to join Kuomintang Governor of Qinghai Ma Bufang in presiding over Tseten's enthronement on 11 June as Choekyi Gyaltsen at Kumbum Monastery. The Dalai Lama's government in Lhasa still refused to recognize Gyaltsen.
The Kuomintang wanted to use Gyaltsen to create a broad anti-Communist base in Southwest China. The Kuomintang formulated a plan where 3 Khampa divisions would be assisted by the Panchen Lama to oppose the Communists.
When Lhasa denied Gyaltsen the territory the Panchen Lama traditionally controlled, he asked Ma Bufang to help him lead an army against Tibet in September 1949. Ma tried to persuade the Panchen Lama to come with the Kuomintang government to Taiwan when the Communist victory approached, but the Panchen Lama declared his support for the Communist People's Republic of China instead. The Panchen Lama, unlike the Dalai Lama, sought to exert control in decision making. In addition, the Dalai Lama regime was tottering, and his government displayed negligence in affairs, the Kuomintang using this to their advantage to expand into the Lhasa regime of the Dalai Lama.
Read more about this topic: Choekyi Gyaltsen, 10th Panchen Lama
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