China’s disinformation machinery kicked into high gear to launch its latest attack against the Tibetan spiritual leader.
– By Tenzin Dalha for The Diplomat, 10 February 2026
China’s information operations represent a systematic, institutionalized approach to global narrative management that transcends conventional propaganda. China has built one of the most sophisticated sustained information warfare campaigns in contemporary history, deploying coordinated mechanisms including expansive digital surveillance, AI-generated content, and platform manipulation.
Bankrolled by enormous state investment, Beijing’s propaganda and online influence operations now extend far beyond its borders, seeking to normalize authoritarian governance and redefine reality itself, one algorithm, platform, and rewritten history at a time. And Tibetans – especially the Dalai Lama – are a prominent target. China’s information operations seek to erase Tibetan cultural identity while manufacturing consent for assimilationist rule.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies’ 2024 Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment characterized these efforts as a calculated “wedge strategy,” designed to exploit existing societal fault lines, undermine trust in democratic institutions, and advance Beijing’s geopolitical agenda through a complex interplay of overt and covert tactics.
The recent viral claim that the Dalai Lama’s name appears between 69 and 169 times in court documents related to notorious sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein offers a revealing case study in contemporary information warfare. Although the figures originated from social media posts rather than verified legal analysis, they circulated widely across global platforms despite repeated debunking by independent fact-checkers and legal analysts who reviewed the publicly released Epstein materials.
A detailed review of the documents shows Epstein strongly desired to forge connections with the Dalai Lama – but there’s no evidence that his wish was fulfilled. The references to the Dalai Lama are largely incidental, appearing in mass-distributed newsletters, administrative contact lists, or discussions with third parties about potential ways to connect, without evidence of personal contact, financial ties, or awareness of Epstein’s crimes on the Dalai Lama’s part. Many of the 169 references are duplicates upon closer examination.
Yet the allegation gained traction. This reflects a broader vulnerability within digital information ecosystems, where numerical specificity can create an illusion of credibility even when substantive context is absent. In such environments, repetition often substitutes for verification.
The timing of the controversy is also significant. The claim resurfaced in February 2026, coinciding with the Dalai Lama’s receipt of a Grammy Award for his spoken-word album. Within hours, China’s Foreign Ministry publicly condemned the award as “anti-China political manipulation,” a response consistent with past official reactions when Tibetan identity or leadership receives international recognition.
Similar dynamics emerged in 2023, when a culturally specific Tibetan greeting gesture was detached from its cultural and religious context and reframed online as inappropriate conduct, generating global outrage. The distortion was later acknowledged by multiple scholars of Tibetan Buddhism and cultural studies.
What distinguishes the Epstein narrative is the scale and coordination of its amplification. Analyses by digital disinformation researchers and open-source investigators point to patterns consistent with inauthentic behavior: clusters of newly created accounts, long-dormant profiles reactivated simultaneously, and coordinated posting of identical or near-identical messages across platforms including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram. Many of these accounts presented themselves as Western users, employing AI-generated profile images or appropriated identities, tactics previously documented in studies of state-linked influence operations originating from China.
Chinese state media played a notable role in early dissemination. CGTN, China’s international broadcaster, was among the first major outlets to prominently cite the misleading “169 times” figure. This early coverage provided the claim with a veneer of journalistic legitimacy, enabling subsequent social media amplification to appear organic rather than orchestrated. Researchers of information operations have long noted this pattern: state media establishes narrative plausibility, while coordinated online networks generate volume and visibility.
These developments align with China’s expanding institutional commitment to external narrative management on Tibet. In September 2024, Beijing launched the Tibet International Communication Center in Lhasa, an initiative officially tasked with building a “foreign discourse system and narrative system related to Tibet,” according to Chinese state media reporting. The project signaled a shift from reactive messaging toward proactive narrative engineering aimed at shaping international perceptions of Tibetan history, culture, and political legitimacy.
The objective of such operations is not necessarily to persuade audiences of a single factual claim, but to erode moral authority through sustained association with controversy. In an information environment saturated with competing narratives, proximity becomes suspicion and repetition becomes memory. Over time, doubt itself becomes the outcome.
For Tibetan communities, this represents a challenge that extends beyond political repression. It threatens their ability to project a coherent narrative internationally and to maintain moral standing in global debates on human rights, religious freedom, and cultural survival.
For democratic societies, the implications are equally serious. Open information ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to actors that operate without constraints of transparency or accountability. When artificial amplification can simulate grassroots consensus at scale, distinguishing genuine public concern from coordinated manipulation becomes increasingly difficult, a problem repeatedly flagged by researchers studying online influence operations in Asia and beyond.
China’s campaign against the Dalai Lama reflects a strategic shift from controlling domestic narratives to actively contesting legitimacy in global digital spaces. The Epstein files episode was not an exercise in accountability but a case of narrative manipulation, in which incidental and non-substantive references were deliberately amplified to generate reputational doubt. The significance lies not in the documents themselves, but in how authoritarian actors exploit the openness of democratic information systems to convert trivial associations into lasting suspicion. If such campaigns go unrecognized, manufactured controversy, not evidence, will continue to shape international perceptions of human rights, cultural identity, and political legitimacy.
Click here to read the original report on The Diplomat.
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