 His entourage tried to persuade him to soften the tone of his petition, but he refused, stating that he spoke in the name of the Tibetan people and that the Chinese leaders deserved a vigorous critique.So it was that in 1962 the Panchen Lama wrote the Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai a document known as the 70,000 Character Petition in which he denounced the draconian policies and actions of the Chinese People's Republic in Tibet.He criticized the Great Leap Forward and a multitude of "inept orders" on the part of the Chinese Communist Party which had caused chronic food shortages.