BEIJING, July 22 - China's fourth-ranking leader, Wang Huning, called on Tibet to safeguard social stability, enforce a new ethnic unity law and bring Tibetan Buddhism into closer alignment with Communist Party priorities during a visit to the region this week.

Wang, part of the ruling Communist Party's seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, visited Tibet's capital Lhasa and the Ngari prefecture, which borders India and Nepal, on a four-day tour of the high-altitude region that concluded on Wednesday, state media said.

"To govern Tibet is foremost to stabilise Tibet," Wang, 70, said. Efforts must be made to "consolidate a political and social environment of unity and stability," he added.

Wang made his visit weeks after a new Chinese law on ethnic unity went into effect on July 1. The law, which drew criticisms from the U.S. and the European Union, gives Beijing the basis to take action against people outside its borders it deems to have undermined "ethnic unity and progress or inciting ethnic separatism."

That same week, a Tibetan man died after setting himself on fire near U.N. headquarters in New York. Activists identified him and said the act was an appeal for independence.

The full implementation of the law should be ensured, Wang said during his Tibet tour.

The Communist Party established the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965. The designation was meant to offer local ethnic minority groups such as the Tibetans greater say over policy matters, including freedom of religious belief. But international human rights groups and exiles routinely describe China's rule in Tibet as "oppressive", an accusation that Beijing rejects.

ADAPTING TIBETAN BUDDHISM TO SOCIALISM

Efforts must be made "to continuously guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to socialist society in line with the requirement to ... systematically promote the Sinicisation of religion in China," Wang said, referring to Beijing's policy of aligning religious practice more closely with Chinese culture and Communist Party doctrines.

As a ...