No split in Chinese govt over Tibet question: foreign ministry

A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry stated Wednesday that there is no split among central authorities over how to handle the Tibet question and that their stance toward the Dalai Lama has been consistent and clear.

In an interview with French television station France 24 aired on Wednesday, the Dalai Lama said there are individuals inside the central government who have a hard-line view of the "autonomy" for Tibet that he has been calling for, Reuters reported.

The Dalai Lama said he "took heart" from Chinese President Xi Jinping's recent comments about Buddhism.

Xi delivered a speech at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in March, saying that after Buddhism was brought into China, the religion "went through an extended period of integrated development with indigenous Confucianism and Taoism and finally became Buddhism with Chinese characteristics, thus making a deep impact on the religious beliefs, philosophy, literature, art, etiquette and customs of the Chinese people."

"But at the same time, among the establishment, there is a lot of hardliner thinking still there," the Dalai Lama said when asked about whether Xi's remarks had made him expect a possible meeting regarding Tibet's "autonomy" with Xi.

"The Dalai Lama must abandon his separatist activities and stop sabotaging China's ethnic unity to create opportunities for himself to make contact with the central government," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Qin Gang told a regular press briefing Tuesday.

Qin said that the topic of any possible talks will not be "Tibet's autonomy," and will absolutely not be the so-called "independence of Tibet," but "the future of the Dalai Lama himself."

Qin stressed that regarding the Tibet question, there are no so-called hawkish or dovish camps inside the central government, or the Communist Party of China as a whole. "Opposing separatist acts, securing unity and territorial integrity and maintaining ethnic unity, that is the resolute consensus of the entire Chinese nation," he said.