BEIJING  Despite protests by the Chinese government, the Dalai Lama is going ahead with plans to visit a heavily militarized Tibetan Buddhist area in northeast India that is the focus of an intense territorial dispute between China and India, a Tibetan official in India said Thursday.

The Dalai Lama, 74, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, is expected to visit Arunachal Pradesh from Nov. 8 to Nov. 15, the official said in an e-mail message. China considers the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, to be a separatist who advocates Tibetan independence. He insists that he wants only true autonomy for Tibet, which the Chinese Army invaded in 1951.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Ma Zhaoxu, said China “firmly opposed” the Dalai Lama’s visit to the region, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. “We believe that this further exposes the Dalai Lama clique’s anti-China and separatist nature,” Mr. Ma said.

Tenzin Taklha, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama, said in an e-mail message last month that the Dalai Lama would visit the region because he had received “a number of invitations” since he last visited in 2003. “There is a large Buddhist population that is keen to have his holiness give teachings,” the spokesman said.