China warns US against lawmakers traveling to India to meet Dalai Lama, including Nancy Pelosi

China urged the United States to “have no contact in any form with the Dalai Lama group and stop sending the wrong signal to the world,” Lin added.

Specifically, Lin warned US President Joe Biden not to support legislation recently passed by Congress – the Act to Promote a Resolution of the Tibet-China Dispute – which challenges China’s claim to control over the Tibet.

“The United States should not sign the bill,” Lin said. “China will take resolute measures to firmly defend its sovereignty, security and development interests.”

The bipartisan delegation, which includes Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a former House speaker, and Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, plans to meet with the exiled spiritual leader on Wednesday.

And in a move that could complicate Biden’s recent attempts to stabilize relations with China, Pelosi — whose 2022 visit as president to Taiwan prompted Beijing to suspend all cooperation with Washington for months — addressed Tuesday at the Tibetan parliament in exile.

Although a video of Pelosi inside the building circulated on Indian news channels, it was unclear what she said in her speech.

Additionally, in what Beijing may view as a further provocation, during the delegation’s meeting with the Dalai Lama on Wednesday, the delegation plans to discuss Sino-Tibetan legislation.

“We’re very excited to see His Holiness tomorrow to talk about a lot of things, including the bill that we passed through Congress, which basically says that the United States stands with the people of Tibet,” said McCaul as the group arrives.

Asked if Biden would sign the bill, McCaul said, “Yes, he will.”

Beijing maintains that Tibet has been under Chinese central governance for more than 700 years, although Tibet’s supporters say there have been periods of effective autonomy. The Dalai Lama said he was not advocating Tibet’s political independence, but he did not agree with Beijing’s historical claims.

China also accuses the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959, of fomenting unrest in Tibet since the late 1980s. No formal dialogue between the two sides has taken place since 2010.

The U.S. State Department considers the autonomous region and other Tibetan areas part of China, and no sitting U.S. president has met with the Dalai Lama since Barack Obama in 2016, although U.S. officials and former Presidents visit him regularly.

India, which has hosted the spiritual leader and his followers for decades, recognized Tibet as part of China in 2003. But since a deadly border clash in 2020 killed at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers in the controversial region of Kashmir, New Delhi has given up. his deference to Chinese sensitivities on this issue.

The US delegation’s trip to Dharamshala coincides with a trip by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell to New Delhi, where Sullivan met Prime Minister Narendra Modi while Campbell held talks with other officials.

According to Harsh Pant, professor of international relations at King’s College London, the delegation’s meeting with the Dalai Lama will add an additional layer of complexity and tension to the strained relations between the United States and China.

“This indicates that there is bottom-up pressure on the Biden administration – which is trying to stabilize relations with China – to revisit the Tibet issue,” Pant said.

Pant said relations would remain “tumultuous going forward” because the broader US political establishment remains focused on issues such as Tibet and Taiwan “which, perhaps, in the past would have been considered not being that important in the grand scheme of things.”

“I think China is going to focus more on this sudden interest and this sudden attempt by the United States to reopen this issue” of Tibet, Pant added.