The Dalai Lama is neither the spiritual leader of Tibet nor does he represent the region. He is the leader of just the Yellow (Gelug) Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, which is dominant in Lhasa. Tibet has been an autonomous region ruled by local kings serving Chinese emperors since the 8th century.

The duties of the Dalai Lama, as well as the Panchen Lama, were prescribed relatively late by the Chinese rulers for helping them with the administration of the faraway and difficult-to-access region. The Chinese rulers made it clear that the Lama had to pass on these duties to the next incarnation, to be found following strict historical and religious rules. But even after the new incarnation was found, the Chinese emperor had the right to veto the choice.

The incarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama, who is now based in Dharamsala, India, was approved by the then national government of China. In short, a living Dalai Lama cannot choose his follower all by himself.

When the British invaded Lhasa in 1903 to snatch Tibet away from China, the 13th Dalai Lama disastrously declared that Tibetans were invulnerable, causing much bloodshed. To escape the attack, the 13th Dalai Lama fled Tibet and took shelter in Inner Mongolia. The destitute Dalai Lama was soon found by the emperor and put under house arrest in a Tibetan prefecture of Qinghai province, where Baron Gustaf Mannerheim, then marshal of Finland, visited him in 1907. The Russian czar, too, was interested in Tibet in order to expand his empire. But that stopped after the October Revolution.

The first decade of the 20th century was marked by political upheavals in China, and in chaos that followed the Boxer Rebellion, the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa, which the British had left because they found it impossible to control the region for lack of transport facilities.