US playing Dalai Lama card shows it lacks strategic vision: Chinese professor

Calling the United States 'naive' for planning at raising the issue of Dalai Lama's succession at the United Nations, Director of China Institute at Fuan University Prof Zhang Weiwei has claimed Washington's actions signify that it lacks a 'strategic vision'.

"The US is being simple and naive. The US has always played the Dalai Lama card in its dealing with China. That also shows that it does not have a strategic vision," said Prof Zhang here on Friday.

Prof Zhang was speaking to ANI on the sidelines of an event organised by the Chinese Embassy on China-India Relations after the second informal meeting between the two nations, which was recently held in Chennai.

Prof Zhang's remarks come after the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom Sam Brownback recently said the US wanted the UN to take up the Dalai Lama's succession issue.

While China, with its veto power in the UN Security Council, would try to block any action, Brownback said the other countries could at least raise their voice at the United Nations.

"I think it's really important to have an early global conversation because this is a global figure with a global impact," Brownback was quoted by media reports as saying.