[1] The 10th Panchen Lama was born as Gonpo Tseten on 19 February 1938, in Bido, today's Xunhua Salar Autonomous County of Qinghai, known as Amdo.

Attending were also Guan Jiyu, the head of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, and ROC Kuomintang Governor of Qinghai, Ma Bufang.

[2] The ROC's Kuomintang formulated a plan where three Tibetan Khampa divisions would be assisted by the Panchen Lama to oppose the Communists.

[5] When Lhasa denied Choekyi Gyaltsen the territory the Panchen Lama traditionally controlled, he asked Ma Bufang to help him lead an army against Tibet in September 1949.

[7][8] Moreover, the Dalai Lama's regency was unstable, having suffered a civil war in 1947, and the Kuomintang took advantage of this to expand its influence in Lhasa.

[4] Radio Beijing broadcast the religious leader's call for Tibet to be "liberated" into China, which created pressure on the Lhasa government to negotiate with the People's Republic.

Chairman Mao called the petition "... a poisoned arrow shot at the Party by reactionary feudal overlords."

For decades, the content of this report remained hidden from all but the very highest levels of the Chinese leadership, until one copy surfaced in 1996.

[20][21] In 1964, he was publicly humiliated at Politburo meetings, dismissed from all posts of authority, declared 'an enemy of the Tibetan people', had his dream journal confiscated and used against him,[22] and was then imprisoned.

The Chinese dissident and former Red Guard Wei Jingsheng published in March 1979 a letter under his name but written by another, anonymous, author denouncing the conditions at Qincheng Prison, where the 10th Panchen Lama was imprisoned.

[27] He began courting Li Jie, uterine granddaughter of Dong Qiwu, a general in PLA who had commanded an Army in the Korean War.

[28][citation needed] The 10th Panchen Lama's death sparked a six-year dispute over his assets amounting to US$ 20 million between his wife and daughter and Tashilhunpo Monastery.

While touring eastern Tibet in 1980, the Panchen Lama also visited the famous Nyingma school master Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok at Larung Gar.

Gyara Tsering Samdrup worked with the business, but was arrested in May 1995 after the 11th Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was recognized.