The tulku system has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent decades on several fronts distinct from the specific Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama succession disputes: the practice of removing a very young recognized child from his birth family to begin intensive monastic training has raised questions, including from some Tibetan Buddhist teachers themselves, about the psychological and developmental impact on children who have no independent capacity to consent to the recognition or the demanding life path it sets in motion, and a number of adult tulkus have, in recent years, publicly renounced or stepped back from their recognized status, describing the role as imposed rather than chosen.
The Chinese government has also asserted direct legal authority over the process since 2007, when it issued regulations requiring state approval for the recognition of reincarnated lamas within its territory, a measure widely understood, including by the tradition's own exiled leadership, as intended to give Beijing decisive future influence, most consequentially over the eventual selection of a fifteenth Dalai Lama, a political dimension layered onto what is, in its traditional form, a purely religious recognition process, and one that has made the tulku system a subject of geopolitical as well as religious significance in a way few other Buddhist institutions are.