 According to one eyewitness,
...he did not become a puppet in the hands of the lamas but, on the contrary, took them in hand.Since his young years he wanted to restore the great Mongolian kingdom of Genghis Khan or, at least, to liberate Mongolia from the Chinese and make it self-dependent.Local princes feared him, but the masses liked him... An independent and clever first hierarch and ruler was unacceptable neither for Tibet, nor for the Chinese.