“If New Delhi is pulling the strings of the Tibetan exiles' political act of flag-hoisting, it will only have burned itself," China’s state-run Global Times reacted in an editorial on July 9 after the Narendra Modi government reportedly allowed the Tibetan government in exile — on the eve of the Dalai Lama's 82nd birthday — to perform rituals on the shores of Ladakh's Pangong Lake along the disputed boundary with China.