By Marie Frail and Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING - Her pink name card reads "Princess of Tibet" in Tibetan, Chinese and English. She loves Prada, European techno dance and has a passion for car racing.

Yabshi Pan Rinzinwangmo, or Renji, is the only child of the late 10th Panchen Lama, Tibet's most senior religious leader after the Dalai Lama, the Himalayan region's exiled god-king.

At 21, she displays political wisdom beyond her years and is acutely aware of her role as a link between the deeply Buddhist people of her father's homeland and the Chinese government.

Her Han Chinese mother with an impeccable political pedigree and reverence for her father are crucial links.

Renji's unique heritage endows her with the ability to influence -- should she choose to do so -- Tibetans, who feel their culture is being steadily eroded by an influx of Han Chinese immigrants after Communist forces invaded in 1950.

Renji, the first child known to be born to a Panchen Lama, has spent the last eight years at school in the United States.

"I like politics and I like discussing politics," said the slim, glamorous student dressed in a gold traditional Tibetan dress, a brooch with her father's image pinned on her chest.

She fondly recalled how Deng Yingchao, wife of China's late premier Zhou Enlai, nicknamed her Tuantuan when she was just 100 days old. The choice was significant since "Tuan" translates as both "round" or "unite" -- a crucial issue in restive Tibet.

"I was given this nickname as she had this great hope in me to be the unifier between Tibetans and Chinese," Renji said in a rare interview in the sitting room of her three-storey, 50-room mansion in central Beijing.

She already has an eye on politics in Tibet, but only after she obtains a bachelor's degree in political science next year.

"I think we should let the people and history decide what role I play ... in the future," said Renji, who became honorary vice president of the Tibetan Red Cross at the tender age of 18.

PERFECT POLITICAL PEDIGREE

Her political pedigree makes her acceptable to the Chinese government and Tibetans.

Her mother, an ethnic Han Chinese and just 21 when she married the 40-year-old Panchen Lama in 1979, is a granddaughter of Dong Qiwu, one of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's generals who defected to join the Communists.

Today, Renji rubs shoulders with the sons and daughters of China's political elite.

What political role she may one day play is far from clear. But one thing is certain, the Chinese government, the Tibetan government-in-exile and pro-Tibet individuals and groups in the West are already vying quietly to win her over.

Renji said she hoped to continue projects that her father's death in 1989 meant he was unable to complete. Those include modernising Tibet while preserving its heritage and improving living conditions -- as well as women's rights.

"Having some political power probably will help me to achieve these goals," said Renji, who is visiting her mother in Beijing.

Her political skills were to the fore as she wittily tiptoed around difficult questions, such as what political system best suited Tibet and if the human rights situation was deteriorating.

But she was quick to add that whatever political system Tibet adopts, it should follow the principles of "equality, autonomy and happiness" espoused by her father.

Adored by many Tibetans, she may inherit her father's legacy.

"People in Tibet are very open-minded about the possibility of this girl representing her father's legacy," said Robert Barnett, a lecturer in modern Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York. "Some Tibetans see this girl ... as having a symbolic role to play in resolving the Tibet conflict.

"We should never rule out the imaginative capacity of people ... to invest their hopes in a new kind of cultural symbol."

Beijing is counting on Renji to help resolve a dispute over who is the real 11th reincarnation of the living Buddha.

The Dalai Lama beat Beijing to announcing in 1995 his recognition of a six-year-old Tibetan boy as the "soul boy" in whom the spirit of the Panchen Lama was reincarnated.

His move enraged China, which found another six-year-old as the reincarnation. The Dalai Lama's choice has never been seen since. Many Tibetans spurn the boy anointed by Beijing.

WON'T KOWTOW

In an arranged 30-minute meeting with the 11th Panchen Lama in Lhasa in 2002, Renji said she was unable to tell if the boy was indeed her father's reincarnation because she was distracted by his staff who tried to force her to prostrate.

She stood her ground, arguing it would have been impractical and adding that her father permitted her not to prostrate.

"When he's home, I see him all the time ... If I kowtow in front of him every single time I see him then I'll be on the ground all the time," she said.

"I'll keep on trying to ... feel what I feel about him (the boy)" in future meetings, she said.

When Renji returned to her homeland in 2002 to brush up her Tibetan, thousands queued up for a glimpse of her, many weeping with joy. Her upper arms became swollen from repeatedly hanging a ceremonial Tibetan scarf around the necks of devotees.

That trip changed her.

"I saw how deeply people cared for my father, how much they loved my father, how much they didn't forget about my father.

"They transferred this love and devotion ... (for) my dad to me," Renji said. "I felt my responsibility tremendously."

The 10th Panchen Lama spent more than a decade either in prison or under house arrest for criticising Beijing in a 1962 petition for mass jailings, starvation and efforts to wipe out Buddhism in Tibet after the 1959 uprising.

He was freed in 1977, politically rehabilitated, appointed vice-chairman of parliament and revered up to this day.

Renji wore coral prayer beads around her wrist, rings to match and a Versace leather watch. She derives her income from a chain of 10 Tibetan medicine shops in south China and a family fortune.

Some political issues she was not afraid to address.

She counts among her father's greatest achievements his 70,000-word petition to China's leaders that was reviled by late Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong as "a poisoned arrow shot".

Asked if she would speak up like her father, Renji said: "If the situation in the future chooses me to be (the person who speaks the truth), I will."