The central authorities and the Chinese people always welcome the Dalai Lama--the Tibetan living Buddha who fled the region in 1959--to return home.

Bainqen Erdini Qoigui Gyaincain, who is vice-chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee and honorary president of the China Buddhists Association, told a group of journalists from Hong Kong and Macao on April 7 that the Dalai Lama could come back "whenever he feels his misgivings are gone. But he must abandon activities for an 'independent Tibet."

"If he insists on going for an 'independent Tibet,''' the Bainqen Lama added, "We will have nothing in common with him. Everything else can be easily settled if he recognizes China's unification."

Bainqen said Party and government leaders had repeatedly told representatives sent by the Dalai Lama, who now lives in India, that the Dalai was welcome to return to China. If he came back to live, he would enjoy the same political treatment and living conditions as he did before he fled to India in 1959. If he decides to come back, the Bainqen Lama said, the Dalai Lama could issue a brief statement to the press, and it would be up to him to decide what he would say in the statement.

The Bainqen Lama said that other Tibetans living abroad are welcome to return to China for a visit or to settle down. "They are free to go abroad again if they wish to," he said.

"I hope all Tibetans abroad stop the manoeuvers for an 'independent Tibet' which are detrimental to the interests of the Tibetan people and the large family of all Chinese nationalities," he said.

Bainqen went on to say that those who attempted to use Tibet's democratic reform to discredit China's concept of "one country, two systems" were making a farfetched comparison. "This is a misinterpretation and an excuse found by some people to oppose the correct policy of 'one country, two systems," he added.

He told Hong Kong and Macao journalists that Tibet's democratic reform and the concept of "one country, two systems" were two entirely different issues that should not be mixed up.

He recalled that there was no such concept at all in 1951, when the central government and the Tibet local government signed an agreement on the liberation of Tibet. "Under the agreement," he said, "Tibet's previous social system would have to be reformed. But how to carry out the reform involved consultation with leaders of the local government and residents."

He also said the agreement was faithfully executed after Tibet's liberation. The central authorities adopted a cautious attitude towards Tibet's democratic reforms and announced in 1956 that Tibet would not be required to carry out the reforms during the period of China's Second Five-Year Plan (1958-62).

However, a handful of Tibet's upper-class elements launched an armed rebellion in 1959. "Their aim was to drag Tibet away from the motherland," he said. "This act ran counter to the phrase of 'upholding the unification of the motherland' as provided in the agreement."

He told reporters the Tibetans strongly demanded an end to the serf system after the rebellion was put down in 1959, adding that if Tibetans had not expressed such a demand, democratic　reforms would not have been carried out then.

(This article appears on page 9, No. 16, 1986)