BEIJING — China said it expressed grave concern to India about a visit by the Dalai Lama to a state in the country's northeast at the heart of a long-running border dispute, saying it showed an anti-China bias.

Tibet's spiritual leader is scheduled to visit a monastery in Arunachal Pradesh on Sunday on what he has said is a spiritual, and not political, trip.

"We have expressed our grave concerns. We believe that this once again exposes the nature of the Dalai Lama as anti-China," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

"We firmly oppose the visits of the Dalai Lama to the border regions ... this is a separatist action," he said.

On a trip to Tokyo late last month, the Dalai Lama said the Chinese government reads too much political meaning into his frequent travels abroad.

"The Chinese government politicizes too much wherever I go. Where I go is not political."

Despite strong criticism from China, the Buddhist leader, who lives in exile in India, recently visited Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory.

Beijing opposes most activities of the Dalai Lama, whom it accuses of advocating independence from Chinese rule for his native Tibet.

Last month he visited Taiwan, his third trip there, to bless the survivors of Typhoon Morakot, which left nearly 700 people dead after it hit the island on Aug 8. He visited disaster areas in southern Taiwan, comforted survivors and held a prayer meeting for typhoon victims attended by 15,000 people, according to his official website.

Tibetans attacked Chinese migrants and shops in the regional capital, Lhasa, and torched parts of the city's commercial district in anti-government riots in March 2008.

Chinese officials say 22 people died, but Tibetans say many times that number were killed.

The violence in Lhasa and protests in Tibetan communities across western China were the most sustained unrest in the region since the late 1980s.

Chinese sensitivities endure over India's mountainous Arunachal Pradesh state, which shares a 1,030-kilometre unfenced border with China.

The Asian giants fought a border war in 1962 and the frontier has yet to be settled despite 13 rounds of talks on the issue.