Lobsang Trinley Lhündrub Chöekyi Gyaltsen (born Gönpo Tseten; 19 February 1938 – 28 January 1989) was the tenth Panchen Lama, officially the 10th Panchen Erdeni (Chinese: 第十世班禅额尔德尼; lit. 'Number-10-lifetime Great Scholar the Treasure'), of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. According to Tibetan Buddhism, Panchen Lamas are living emanations of Buddha Amitabha. He was often referred to simply as Choekyi Gyaltsen.
The Panchen Lama incarnation line began in the seventeenth century after the 5th Dalai Lama gave Choekyi Gyeltsen the title, and declared him to be an emanation of Buddha Amitaba. Officially, he became the first Panchen Lama in the lineage, while he had also been the sixteenth abbot of Tashilhunpo Monastery.
The 10th Panchen Lama was born as Gonpo Tseten on 19 February 1938, in Bido, today's Xunhua Salar Autonomous County of Qinghai, known as Amdo. His father was also called Gonpo Tseten and his mother was Sonam Drolma. After the Ninth Panchen Lama died in 1937, two simultaneous searches for the tenth Panchen Lama produced different boys, with the government in Lhasa preferring a boy from Xikang, and the Ninth Panchen Lama's khenpos and associates choosing Gonpo Tseten. On 3 June 1949, the Republic of China (ROC) government declared its support for Gonpo Tseten.
On 11 June 1949, at twelve years of age (using the Tibetan counting system), Gonpo Tseten was enthroned at the major Gelugpa monastery in Amdo, Kumbum Jampa Ling monastery as the 10th Panchen Lama and given the name Lobsang Trinley Lhündrub Chökyi Gyaltsen. Attending were also Guan Jiyu, the head of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, and ROC Kuomintang Governor of Qinghai, Ma Bufang. Still in Lhasa, the Dalai Lama recognized the Panchen Lama Choekyi Gyaltsen a few years later, after they met.
The ROC wanted to use Choekyi Gyaltsen to create a broad anti-Communist base in Southwest China. The ROC's Kuomintang formulated a plan where three Tibetan Khampa divisions would be assisted by the Panchen Lama to oppose the Communists.
When Lhasa denied Choekyi Gyaltsen the territory the Panchen Lama traditionally controlled, he asked Ma Bufang to help him lead an army against Tibet in September 1949. Ma tried to persuade the Panchen Lama to come with the Kuomintang government to Taiwan when the Communist victory approached, but the Panchen Lama declared his support for the Communist People's Republic of China instead. Moreover, the Dalai Lama's regency was unstable, having suffered a civil war in 1947, and the Kuomintang took advantage of this to expand its influence in Lhasa.
The Panchen Lama reportedly supported China's claim of sovereignty over Tibet, and supported China's reform policies for Tibet. Radio Beijing broadcast the religious leader's call for Tibet to be "liberated" into China, which created pressure on the Lhasa government to negotiate with the People's Republic.
At Kumbum Monastery, the Panchen Lama gave a Kalacakra initiation in 1951. That year, the Panchen Lama was invited to Beijing as the Tibetan delegation was signing the 17-Point Agreement and telegramming the Dalai Lama to implement the Agreement. He was recognized by the 14th Dalai Lama when they met in 1952.
In September 1954, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama went to Beijing to attend the first session of the first National People's Congress, meeting Mao Zedong and other leaders. The Panchen Lama was soon elected a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and in December 1954 he became the deputy chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. In 1956, the Panchen Lama went to India on a pilgrimage together with the Dalai Lama. When the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, the Panchen Lama publicly supported the Chinese government, and the Chinese brought him to Lhasa and made him chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region.
After a tour through Tibet in 1962, the Panchen Lama wrote a document addressed to Prime Minister Zhou Enlai denouncing the abusive policies and actions of the People's Republic of China in Tibet. This became known as the 70,000 Character Petition. According to Isabel Hilton, it remains the "most detailed and informed attack on China's policies in Tibet that would ever be written."
The Panchen Lama met with Zhou Enlai to discuss the petition he had written. The initial reaction was positive, but in October 1962, the PRC authorities dealing with the population criticized the petition. Chairman Mao called the petition "... a poisoned arrow shot at the Party by reactionary feudal overlords."
For decades, the content of this report remained hidden from all but the very highest levels of the Chinese leadership, until one copy surfaced in 1996. In January 1998, upon the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the birth of the Tenth Panchen Lama, an English translation by Tibet expert Robert Barnett entitled A Poisoned Arrow: The Secret Report of the 10th Panchen Lama, was published.
In 1964, he was publicly humiliated at Politburo meetings, dismissed from all posts of authority, declared 'an enemy of the Tibetan people', had his dream journal confiscated and used against him, and was then imprisoned. He was 26 years old at the time. The Panchen's situation worsened when the Cultural Revolution began. The Chinese dissident and former Red Guard Wei Jingsheng published in March 1979 a letter under his name but written by another, anonymous, author denouncing the conditions at Qincheng Prison, where the 10th Panchen Lama was imprisoned. In October 1977 he was released, but held under house arrest in Beijing until 1982.
In 1978, after giving up his vows of an ordained monk, he travelled around China, looking for a wife to start a family. He began courting Li Jie, uterine granddaughter of Dong Qiwu, a general in PLA who had commanded an Army in the Korean War. She was a medical student at Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an. At the time, the Lama had no money and was still blacklisted by the party, but the wife of Deng Xiaoping and widow of Zhou Enlai saw the symbolic value of a marriage between a Tibetan Lama and a Han woman. They personally intervened to wed the couple in a large ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in 1979. One year later, the Panchen Lama was given the Vice Chairmanship of the National People's Congress and other political posts, and he was fully politically rehabilitated by 1982.
Li Jie bore a daughter in 1983, named Yabshi Pan Rinzinwangmo (Standard Tibetan: ཡབ་གཞིས་པན་རིག་འཛིན་དབང་མོ་, romanized: yab gzhis pan rig 'dzin dbang mo). Popularly known as the "Princess of Tibet", she is considered important in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan-Chinese politics, as she is the only known offspring in the over 620-year history of either the Panchen Lama or Dalai Lama reincarnation lineages.
Of her father's death, Rinzinwangmo reportedly refused to comment, allegedly attributing his early death to his generally poor health, morbid obesity, and chronic sleep deprivation. The 10th Panchen Lama's death sparked a six-year dispute over his assets amounting to $20 million between his wife and daughter and Tashilhunpo Monastery.
The Panchen Lama made several journeys to Tibet from Beijing, during 1980 and afterwards.
While touring eastern Tibet in 1980, the Panchen Lama also visited the famous Nyingma school master Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok at Larung Gar.