While the depth of faith in Buddhism and the Dalai Lama has not changed after five decades of occupation, the adaptation and reinvention of religious expression have become key to the survival of Tibetan Buddhist faith.
Adaptation is the primary tool Tibetans use to maintain the practice of religion in China-occupied Tibet. The people have been forced to remain malleable in their expression of religious faith and yet they are today, over four decades after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, as faithful to Buddhism and to the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader, as they were before the 1949 invasion. And this is so despite what the People's Republic of China (PRC) leaders and Chinese media may say, in articles such as the one in Xinhua newspaper entitled "Support for Dalai Dwindles" (March 2001). The state mouthpiece reported a poll in which 86 percent of Tibetans in Lhasa considered the Dalai Lama a "separatist and a politician". This is propaganda that few China- and Tibet-watchers take seriously.
There is often an assumption by Tibetan support groups in the West, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, and writers on current Tibetan affairs that there are blanket policies emanating from Beijing that cover all elements of Tibet's religious life. This myth of 'totalisation', the false belief that one situation represents the whole of the experience, is counter-productive, giving, as it does, a false impression of the state of affairs. One example is reporting of the kind that implies that because a few nuns at one convent in Lhasa were expelled, all nuns in the Tibetan Autonomous Region are at risk. This kind of myth is created by repeated generalisations that propose a homogenous policy of religious suppression is carried out dutifully in all corners of Tibet by government cadre. Repetition makes the myth self-perpetuating and soon it passes into the realm of 'knowledge' on Tibet.
It is not always so readily apparent what polices are brewing behind the high walls of the offices of the Chinese Communist Party and Religious Affairs Bureau in Beijing even though analysts abound worldwide whose job it is to decipher these signals. Clearly, when it comes to on-the-ground application, whatever policies may emerge from Beijing, these polices are not implemented uniformly throughout the monasteries, nunneries and other religious institutions across the Tibetan plateau.