China dismisses Dalai Lama's succession plan as

An angry China today said that any successor chosen by the 14th Dalai Lama would be “illegal”, days after the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader asserted that he and not Beijing had the right to identify his next incarnation.

“There is a complete set of religious rituals and historical conventions in reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and a Dalai Lama identifying his own successor has never been the practice,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters here at a briefing.

From: http://ping.fm/tyK3I