China has expressed anger and threatened countermeasures after the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama spoke at the European parliament in Strasbourg last week and met its president, Martin Schulz.

China regards the 81-year-old Nobel peace prize-winning monk as a separatist, though he says he merely seeks genuine autonomy for his Himalayan homeland, which communist Chinese troops “peacefully liberated” in 1950.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Monday the European parliament and Schulz had ignored China’s “strong opposition” about meeting the Dalai Lama, which ran contrary to the European Union’s promises to China on the issue of Tibet.

“China is resolutely opposed to the mistaken actions of the European parliament,” Lu told a daily news briefing, adding that the parliament’s leaders’ insistence on taking an erroneous position had damaged China’s core interests.

“China absolutely cannot remain indifferent, and we will make the correct choice in accordance with our judgment of the situation,” he said, without elaborating on what action may be taken.

Few foreign leaders are willing to meet the Dalai Lama, fearful of provoking a strong reaction from China, the world’s second-largest economy.

Last week, Beijing warned Taiwan not to allow the Dalai Lama to visit, after a high-profile Taiwan legislator invited him to the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.

Tibet’s spiritual leader told the European parliament last week he hoped the Tibetan issue would be resolved but urged the outside world and the EU in particular not to hold back from criticising Beijing.

The Dalai Lama, who also met the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee chairman, Elmar Brok during his visit to France, fled to India in 1959 following a failed uprising against the Chinese. Rights groups and exiles accuse China of trampling on the religious and cultural rights of the Tibetan people, charges strongly denied by Beijing, which says its rule has brought prosperity to a once-backward region.