The nine-year-old boy picked by Beijing as Tibet's second-holiest figure is under heavy police protection because of fears for his safety on his first return to the Himalayan region.
Yesterday the Panchen Lama was escorted in a 21-vehicle police motorcade to a sacred Buddhist ritual in his own monastery in Shigatse, Tibet's second city.
Monks with walkie-talkies patrolled the grounds of the Tashi Lhunpo monastery, and Buddhist pilgrims were kept at a distance.
The motorcade included an emergency medical vehicle and three police cars, with flashing red and blue lights.
During yesterday's ceremony a giant Tibetan thanka, a satin embroidered icon roughly 15 storeys high, was unfurled by horn-blowing monks behind the monastery, which houses the world's biggest bronze Buddha.
Chinese authorities are using the visit to try to boost the legitimacy of the 11th Panchen Lama against a rival named by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled god king and Buddhist spiritual leader.
According to accounts by witnesses and interviews with monks, security precautions have been elaborate and the reaction of Tibet's devout Buddhist population has been wary.
Mr Nema Tsering, deputy chairman of the Tibet autonomous region government, blamed the tight security on pro-independence forces who, he said, were led by the Dalai Lama.
"In Tibet the splittist and anti-splittist struggle is continuous," he said.
In Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, troops with machine-guns ringed the Jokhang temple when the Panchen Lama visited earlier this month under cover of darkness early in the morning, one monk said. The main road to Lhasa's international airport was sealed off.
Mr Wang Dui, the second-ranking administrative official at the Jokhang temple, said the 11th Panchen Lama was welcomed "very warmly and with great pomp".
But a red-robed monk, speaking out of earshot, said: "Of course, he doesn't have any support.
"He came at night and there were troops everywhere. He just sat there looking uncomfortable.
"I really felt sorry for him. He's being used as a pawn," the monk said.
The official Xinhua news agency reported on a Buddhist ritual the Panchen Lama attended last week.
"The Panchen Lama has an unusual understanding of the sutras besides his outstanding memory, convincing his followers that he is the true reincarnation of the last Panchen Lama," it quoted one of the boy's teachers as saying.
The boy has been living in Beijing under the tutelage of Tibetan Buddhist lamas since 1995 when his name was plucked from a golden urn in a lottery organised by China's atheist authorities.
Months earlier, the Dalai Lama had infuriated Beijing by unilaterally announcing his own choice as Panchen Lama, setting off a row that has poisoned relations between the two sides.
The 10-year-old named by the Dalai Lama has been held by Chinese authorities under virtual house arrest with his family since 1995 at an unknown location.