China media: Dalai Lama campaign
Ahead of Premier Li Keqiang's visit to India next week, state media have launched a high-profile international campaign accusing Tibetan exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama of inciting self-immolation protests.
Major news portals and many newspapers have prominently featured a China Central Television (CCTV) International documentary broadcast last night that blames the Dalai Lama for a spate of self-immolations by Tibetans - in what activists outside China say is a protest against Beijing's rule.
The documentary, which will also be released in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Russian, is aimed at letting "the international community recognise the truth about self-immolation incidents", CCTV says.
A transcript of the documentary outlines how "Dalai clique" members of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India allegedly posted "self-immolation instructions" on the internet to incite Tibetans in China to set themselves alight.
"This behaviour is enough to spur the international community to further understand the cruelty and madness of the Dalai clique, and also impel certain Western forces to have more scruples when supporting the Dalai clique," Beijing Morning Post comments.
A Tibetan villager who was detained in March after reportedly attempting to self-immolate in Kardze, a Tibetan-majority area in Sichuan province, explains how he followed the alleged "self-immolation guidebook".
"There is no doubt that this 'self-immolation guidebook' is irrefutable evidence on the Dalai clique planning and inciting Tibetan self-immolations," the documentary asserts.
"The Dalai clique thinks that planning self-immolations will add some pressure on the Chinese government. On the contrary, every self-immolation that occurs is the Dalai clique's blood debt owed to the Tibetan people," a Xinhua News Agency commentary says.
The Dalai Lama has consistent rejected allegations that he incites the self-immolations and has instead called on the government in Beijing to address Tibetans' grievances.
In other international news, mainland state media have ramped up criticism of Manila's handling of the fatal shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman by the Philippine Coast Guard last week.
China Central Television's morning news bulletin questions whether "miscommunication or tactical negligence" led to the Philippine government being unaware of the arrival of an uninvited Taiwan investigating team in Manila.
Another CCTV programme, Common Focus, last night accused the Philippines of having a "consistently disrespectful" attitude towards Taiwan in the stand-off.
Under the headline "Irresponsible and inept", China Daily accuses Manila of using "delaying tactics" in not holding a full investigation and says it showed its "insincerity and indifference to human life" by taking four days to agree to apologise for the killing.
"Faced with a step-by-step deterioration of the situation, perhaps the Philippines has only now realized that it has been carrying a 'hot yam'. Its usual approach of casually shirking responsibility, being half-hearted and letting things drag on for some time before leaving the case unresolved no longer seems to work," Guangming Daily comments.
Over in Taiwan, Taipei Times commentator Paul Lin Bao-hua warns against Beijing, especially its armed forces, potentially intervening militarily by instigating an incident between the Taiwan and Philippine navies.
"Why would China want to do this? Because it would set the two countries [Taipei, Beijing] against the Philippines, backed by the US, and put cracks in the Taiwan-US-Japan alliance. China would then come out a winner in this fishing dispute," he says.
Want Daily says a "geopolitical tussle" between Beijing and Washington for dominance in East Asia lies behind the dispute. It says the mainland could tip the balance of power in its favour by softening its threat of force against Taiwan.
Liberty Times says the Taiwan government's poor handling of the dispute has highlighted the "limitations and damage" of the 'one-China' policy on Taiwan's diplomatic clout and national security, and says citizens must "get rid of the shackles of 'one China'".
Back on the mainland, reports on a protest in Kunming, Yunnan, have been deleted from mainland news websites, Hong Kong's Ming Pao reports. It also cites unconfirmed reports on local authorities monitoring protestors and blocking online discussion of the incident.
According to the English-language version of Global Times, an official newspaper, crowds ignored police warnings and took to the streets in Kunming for a second time to demand the cancellation of a massive state-run oil refinery project and a related paraxylene (PX) plant in nearby Anning over fears of pollution.
South China Morning Post says the city's mayor rejected the protesters' demands for a referendum on the project and "evaded" most questions about the fate of the refinery, frustrating some protesters who left in the middle of the meeting.
"Instead, he offered face-to-face dialogue with protesters next Wednesday. Only eight people signed up," the newspaper adds.