The life of Gyalo Thondup, who has died aged 97, was transformed after one of his younger brothers, Lhamo Thondup, was identified by senior Tibetan monks as the reincarnation of the great 13th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who in 1912 had declared Tibet’s independence.
In 1979, after the death of Mao Zedong and in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s opening of China, Thondup visited the Chinese premier for a discussion about a possible return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.
Partly as a result of this meeting, several fact-finding missions from the Tibetan government in exile visited Tibet with a view to the Dalai Lama himself doing so in 1985.
This led to his meeting the president of what was still the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, who regarded the young Tibetan as the ideal person to liaise between himself and the Dalai Lama as soon as the latter came of age.
Brother of the Dalai Lama and political envoy who led talks on the exiled leader’s return to Tibet with the Chinese government.
