The Dalai Lama celebrated his 90th birthday in India, announcing plans to reincarnate and hopes to live to 130 amid succession tensions.

The Dalai Lama turned 90 on Sunday surrounded by thousands of followers, who thronged the Himalayan town of Dharamshala, where the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has been living in exile since fleeing Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959.

Even as the Dalai Lama has called for a ‘middle way’ approach, the Communist Party of China (CPC) cannot come to terms with the idea of co-existing with Tibetans as its totalitarian ethno-nationalist state has no room for a non-Han group or leader — and certainly not for someone like the Dalai Lama whom his followers revere like a god.