Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism (Order No. 5)

Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism, Order No. 5, issued by China's State Administration for Religious Affairs in 2007, is the primary regulatory text itself, requiring government approval for the identification, verification and enthronement of reincarnated tulku within Tibetan Buddhism, formally stated as protecting religious tradition while barring living Buddhas from re-establishing abolished feudal privileges. Its strength is that it is the actual regulation's own wording, essential for any claim about what Chinese law formally requires rather than a paraphrase from either side of a heavily politicized dispute. Its limit is severe and should be stated directly: the Dalai Lama, the Central Tibetan Administration and international human rights organizations have condemned the order as a mechanism for state control over Tibetan Buddhist succession rather than genuine religious protection, so a claim treating the order's stated religious rationale as its actual purpose, rather than as one deeply contested framing, needs that opposing view stated alongside it.