This week, the Dalai Lama is back in Arunachal Pradesh to engage in what seems to be purely spiritual endeavors. But the trip has prompted outrage and derision from Beijing. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying went so far as to say that India had “severely damaged China's interests and China-India relations” by allowing the trip.

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Fundamentally, China thinks that India has provided the Dalai Lama with a sanctuary to carry out a separatist political agenda and foment dissent in Tibet. Each time India — or any other country, for that matter — allows the Dalai Lama to speak at an officially authorized event, Beijing issues sharp accusations of “interference” in its “internal affairs.” After the Dalai Lama visited Mongolia, they were forced to apologize and bar him from further entry.

There's also an extra layer of conflict between India and China. Ever since the two countries fought a brief war in 1962, China has claimed as much as 35,000 square miles of Indian-administered land along Tibet’s eastern and western fringes. Dozens of rounds of talks have failed to settle the border disputes, and both sides station tens of thousands of troops there — often within sight of each other across lofty Himalayan passes. There's also a Tibetan government-in-exile that runs out of the Indian city of Dharamsala.

India is not Mongolia, and it certainly won’t apologize. But it's also unlikely that China will exact any retribution. For all of Beijing's complaints, Tibet is mostly peaceful — and firmly under Beijing’s thumb.

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For his part, the Dalai Lama remained his jolly old self amid the diplomatic saber-rattling.

“Whenever I come to the northeast of India, it feels like a reunion with people here,” he said Saturday. “When I visit, I am reminded of the freedom that I had experienced for the first time.”