original

674x448

610x380

500x500

400x266

400x240

400x203

301x200

1250x600

1084x550

Nepal’s Transitional Justice and the West’s recalibration

<div class="embed-block"><a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/issue/133">							<img width="762" height="261" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11c39c7e80680e0da4f5jpeg.jpg" alt=""></a>
											Issue #133 21-27 February 2003</div>
The obsession of our leaders with Singapore is unmatched. Every prime minister we have had in the 30 years (some of them serial prime ministers) has promised to turn Nepal into a Singapore one too many times. Why not just build a Nepal that is just and fair for everyone?
Many readers are going through a withdrawal syndrome after the Ass formally stepped down, including the author his-self. This week we revisit one of the earlier <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=4308#.Y_guAy8w1KM">‘Under My Hat’ columns</a> which takes a dig at our Singaporean aspirations.&nbsp;
Excerpts from <a href="https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/nepalitimes/pdf/Nepali_Times_133.pdf">issue #133 21-27 February 2003</a> 20 years ago this week:
If, one day, we want to become filthy rich like the Singaporeans, it is pretty clear that we must institute stiff fines for all major and minor misdemeanours and also turn ourselves into a penal colony.
But let’s be realistic: do our army, navy and air force have the capacity to instill fines on every non-flushing Nepali? Sadly, the answer is an unequivocal “no”. So, unlike Singapore, which penalises offenders with fines, we must use positive enforcement by rewarding those who do things right. In Nepal, instead of taking money away from those who litter, we must give money to those who don’t.
Cash prize of Rs 2,000 for the lone pedestrian who actually used the overhead walkway at Bhotahity in the last fiscal year. To be presented at a public felicitation ceremony chaired by the Mayor of Kathmandu or the MP of Kathmandu, whoever is elected first.
The Honest Cop Award in Cash or Kind for the pre-embarkation security check personnel at Tribhuvan Intercontinental Ballistic Airport who doesn’t ask you to open your wallet during the mandatory body search and contribute generously to the Free Lunch Fund for Kathmandu’s Finest.
The columnist who adheres to the highest standards of personal hygiene by not grooming his nostrils in full view of the rest of his staff during the course of writing the above column. This award carries with it a permanent residence certificate for Singapore. Terima Kasi.
From archive material of Nepali Times of the past 20 years, site search: <a href="http://www.nepalitimes.com/" target="_blank">www.nepalitimes.com</a>

Singha Darbar, not Singapore

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11b39c7e80680e0da4f1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="880"/><figcaption>Richard Solomon playing with Chinese table tennis champion Zhuang Zedong.</figcaption></figure>On June 19, 1972, a Boeing 707 belonging to the United States Presidential fleet, touched down at Peking Airport at 7:30 pm on what a New York Times report referred to as ‘a warm bright evening’.The flight had departed Andrews Air Force Base two days earlier in choppy weather with stops in Hawaii and the US Military base in Guam and touched down in Shanghai briefly where a Chinese pilot was picked up, presumably for navigational and security purposes.After all, this was still during the early phases of the thaw in Sino-US relations on the heels of the historic visit of President Richard Nixon to China in February 1972. Significant distrust was still in the process of being worked out.The Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China Ji Pengfei was on hand to receive the US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on this day. This would be Kissinger’s fourth visit to Beijing in less than a year: his secret visit to Beijing via Pakistan took place in July 1971, followed by an officially scheduled visit in October of that year, then accompanying Richard Nixon during the President’s historic visit in February 1972.Emerging from the aircraft that evening at Peking airport behind Kissinger was a 35-year-old National Security Council (NSC) staffer by the name of Richard H Solomon. In the annals of history of this critical period of diplomacy between the United States and China, which continues to shape events even of the 21st century, the memory of individuals like Ambassador Solomon sadly appears to recede into a distant background.Richard Solomon died in 2017 at the age of 79. He was a central figure in a dramatis personae that helped end more than two decades of almost absolute diplomatic estrangement between China and the United States.In the current politically charged environment, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19, it is easy to forget just how important that breakthrough in US-China relations was, and continues to be for the subsequent evolution of global history. In less than 20 years after Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to China, the Cold War effectively ended leaving the United States as the sole superpower.This was largely due to a US strategic posture that balanced China against the former Soviet Union. Solomon noted in a 2011 interview that the “shared security threat” is what welded the two very unlikely societies together.China’s engagement with the United States in the early 1970s, set in motion processes that would lead to China’s integration into the global economic order, and subsequently lead to unprecedented economic growth and the lifting of hundreds of millions of people from poverty.It is actually testament to the past contribution of less well-know people such as Richard Solomon that many observers today are able to make the argument that the US-China relationship will be the most significant one of the 21st century.What makes a person like Richard Solomon especially appealing in the broad sweep of the history of Sino-US relations (and diplomacy more generally) is that he was a scholar-practitioner par excellence, the likes of which are becoming increasingly rare today.Moreover, his contributions are overlooked and left unacknowledged vis a vis people like Kissinger and Nixon. He was appointed to the US National Security Council in the fall of 1971 as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow.At age 34, he arrived at the White House and ‘immediately got heavily drawn into the whole process of normalizing <a href="https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Solomon,%20Richard%20A.toc.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.adst.org/OH%2520TOCs/Solomon,%2520Richard%2520A.toc.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2RaA48JvVogqtGGcUnLf77">US relations with China</a>’. Prior to this appointment, Solomon had already developed extensive credentials as an authority on China.He was a student at MIT under Lucian Pye, the noted political scientist and China watcher, and had witnessed China become ‘a matter of contemporary public interest’ in the United States due to the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958 over the Quemoy and Matsu islands and also because of the Sino-Soviet split that had already commenced in 1960. A serendipitous event in June 1961 in the office of his PhD supervisor at MIT, Lucian Pye, appears to have launched Solomon’s career irrevocably in the direction of becoming a China specialist.As the story has it, he and Pye were sitting across the table from one another when the telephone rang. On the line was the famous American economist Walt Whitman Rostow, author of The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Rostow was then running the Policy Planning staff in the Kennedy Administration, and told his former MIT colleague Lucian Pye that ‘intelligence information indicated that the <a href="https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Solomon,%20Richard%20A.toc.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.adst.org/OH%2520TOCs/Solomon,%2520Richard%2520A.toc.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2RaA48JvVogqtGGcUnLf77">Chinese were in the midst of a major food crisis</a>, and he wondered if Pye knew anyone who could analyse some of the information that was beginning to emerge on how the Chinese were dealing with this food crisis’.Pye looked across his office table and responded to Rostow: “Well, we have a young man right here who might be right for this project. I’ll get back to you.” This call set off a chain of events in the career of the young PhD student who then went on to study Chinese for the next five years at Yale, Harvard, the Taiwan National University and in Hong Kong.His PhD work differed substantially from existing Sinology of the time which centered on ‘analysis of classical texts and heavily Confucian-oriented’. Solomon’s research was based out of Hong Kong and Taiwan where he did actual empirical interviews with ‘100 Chinese refugees from the mainland of China who represented the three existing generations: the generation who had lived most of their lives under the Qing dynasty that collapsed in 1912; those who had lived during the Warlord period; and the more recent generation who had grown up, at least in part, under the communists’.This could not have been a better way to understand the ‘political culture’ for his PhD, the seemingly ‘simple’ notion that people from different cultures or countries think about and experience politics in radically different way. He was perhaps not so simplistic and way ahead of his times in trying to grapple with what makes Chinese politics and political practice distinct, instead of naively assuming or expecting, as one example, that there would be an automatic correlation between the opening up of its economy and the evolution of liberal western-style democracy in China.Richard Solomon went on to write several important books such as the voluminous 600-page Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture in September 1971 just as he started work at the NSC under Kissinger. Solomon’s substantive policy work at the NSC started out with ‘liaising or bridging over to the academic community’, essentially devising possibilities for academic and other such exchanges with China, an experience that led to what Solomon referred to as his first “operational assignment” as Nixon and Kissinger’s ‘representative in the Chinese ping-pong team’s American tour in April of 1972’.Solomon explains that ping-pong diplomacy was one aspect of the ‘signaling’ that was taking place from Mao and Zhou Enlai and from Nixon too as early as 1967 via his Foreign Affairs article (and built upon via secret diplomatic communications that started in 1969 or even earlier) indicating that there was a serious interest for engagement in both the United States and in China.Solomon was placed in an extraordinary position at this time, having been ‘assigned to escort the Chinese ping-pong team around [America] as the “eyes and ears” of the White House’. His primary remit was to understand as best as possible the mood and views of the Chinese ping-pong delegation.According to Adam Bernstein of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/richard-solomon-kissinger-aide-involved-in-ping-pong-diplomacy-with-china-dies-at-79/2017/03/14/a8866d74-ef03-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/richard-solomon-kissinger-aide-involved-in-ping-pong-diplomacy-with-china-dies-at-79/2017/03/14/a8866d74-ef03-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0LAPCNNtAEODL3QDuWBUh8">The Washington Post</a>, here was an extremely unique personality, ‘a China scholar who assisted in the historic “ping-pong diplomacy” that led to the opening of US-Sino relations in the 1970s, who became an authority on Chinese pressure tactics during negotiations’ with Chinese officials.In 1976, Solomon left the National Security Council to work in academia as head of the political science department RAND Corporation. Solomon himself <a href="https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Solomon,%20Richard%20A.toc.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.adst.org/OH%2520TOCs/Solomon,%2520Richard%2520A.toc.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1676628565693000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2RaA48JvVogqtGGcUnLf77">described RAND</a> as a ‘FFRDC—a Federally Funded Research and Development Center … that conducted about two-thirds of its work under contract to the Defense Department’.The most important study he carried out during his time at RAND was one that was commissioned by US intelligence agencies that was expressly focused on Chinese political negotiating behaviour. Solomon explained that “that project resulted in a book-length study that was first published on a classified basis within the government and then a decade later was finally made public’.The title of the book is Chinese Political Negotiating Behavior, 1967-1984. As it remained classified for a number of years, we can assume that it served as not only required reading material for important leaders and bureaucrats in successive US administrations, but that it moulded opinion as well.Bhaskar Koirala is an independent analyst associated with Peking University.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11b89c7e80680e0da4f2jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="754"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11bc9c7e80680e0da4f3jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="754"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20230228150236/63fe11c09c7e80680e0da4f4jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="754"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><h2>The Chinese negotiation approach</h2>Richard Solomon’s study is still available on the RAND Corporation website is summarised in the following way:‘An assessment of the patterns and practices in the ways officials of the People's Republic of China (PRC) managed high-level political negotiations with the United States during the normalization phase of relations between the two countries. This study is designed to provide guidance for senior American officials prior to their negotiating encounters with PRC counterparts and to establish control over the documentary record of U.S.-PRC political exchanges between 1967 and 1984. A basic finding of the study is that Chinese officials conduct negotiations in a distinctive, but not unique, manner consisting of a meticulously managed progression of well-defined stages. The approach is influenced by both Western diplomatic practice and the Marxist-Leninist tradition acquired from the Soviet Union, but its most distinctive qualities are based on China's own cultural tradition and political practices.’

40 years after the Sino-US thaw

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022120710124/639057aa9c7e80680e0ce169jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"/>The Himalaya is a hotspot in more ways than one. <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/climate-change-is-a-disaster-in-the-nepal-himalaya/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031027000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2qldtXvBBGlTizC2zYp2-6">Climate breakdown</a> is melting its ice at an unprecedented rate, countries that border the Himalaya are not in speaking terms, and the world’s youngest mountain range is in a seismically active zone.Geopolitics and geotectonics collide along the 2,400km Himalayan arc, even while its glaciers shrink and the snowline recedes. The Siachen Glacier at 6,000m elevation is the world’s highest battlefield where the militaries of India and Pakistan have been eyeball-to-eyeball since 1984. Thousands of troops have died either because of altitude or by avalanches, few in actual fighting.India and China have over 60,000 troops facing each other in a disputed part of Ladakh, and dozens on both sides were killed when <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/view-of-galwan-from-bhutan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/view-of-galwan-from-bhutan/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2GK9eh_kycFgXSxwoWlgF9">clashes erupted in 2020.</a>Accelerated melting of Himalayan glaciers have created hundreds of new lakes along the mountains. Because they are dammed by fragile moraines, these are in danger of bursting — a risk that has been compounded by earthquake risk.The climate crisis is a water crisis, and nowhere is this more acute than in the Himalaya. What happens at the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/global-crisis-local-solutions/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/global-crisis-local-solutions/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1FjilnWV90pM-k7HDurzLV">UN Climate Summit (COP27)</a> in Egypt this week will determine whether greenhouse gas emissions that thaw the Himalaya will be reduced in the coming decade.Some 2 billion people living downstream depend on rivers that originate in the Himalaya and the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/it-is-getting-hotter-on-the-roof-of-the-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/it-is-getting-hotter-on-the-roof-of-the-world/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw10rcns9BCSYKWoDyA5UyzO">Tibetan Plateau</a>. In fact, as the permanent ice in the Himalaya melts, water is going to be a strategic commodity that could further inflame geopolitical tensions in an already volatile region.In their new monograph Governing the ‘Water Tower of Asia’: The Case for a System of Integrated Knowledge for the Hindu Kush Himalaya, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Sayanangsu Modak of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in New Delhi make a strong case for integrating water management of the ten river basins of the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain range.The circulation of water vapour in the atmosphere, along rivers and of underground water does not respect international boundaries, but policies governing the water cycle are national in scope. The authors propose the creation of ‘integrated knowledge’ that is essential for combined management of water in future as the climate crisis magnifies current problems. Such knowledge has to be trans-boundary as well as trans-disciplinary, they argue.In their study, Bandyopadhyay and Modak come up with the concept of SINK (System of Integrated Knowledge) that tries to transcend present fragmented planning to include inter-disciplinary knowledge.‘Nature organises itself in a systematic and integrated manner, (but) the reductionism that has predominated the contemporary governance paradigm interrupts nature’s systems,’ they write.The <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=1211#.Y2irfS8RqLc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D1211%23.Y2irfS8RqLc&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0dXIz-K6POTNMYbr7scCxi">Himalayan landscape</a> is a ‘climate-maker’ that precipitates water from sky rivers as snow and rainfall. The ice on mountains has accumulated over millennia, advancing and retreating with the Ice Ages, but the present glacial retreat is different because of its pace, and since it is caused by anthropogenic carbon build-up in the atmosphere.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022120710124/639057af9c7e80680e0ce16ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1872" height="1416">Although ice and snow are more visible and get most of the attention in the climate debate, it is groundwater stored in deep aquifers and released slowly through <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepals-silent-emergency-springs-going-dry/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/nepals-silent-emergency-springs-going-dry/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1SsKvIyK0otuCwZCc5E44W">perennial springs</a> into rivers on which most people depend. In fact, besides being the ‘Water Tower of Asia’, the Himalaya has also been described as a gigantic sponge.Both the ice and groundwater storage is now being impacted by global warming and the changes in landcover due to deforestation, haphazard infrastructure, or mining activities. The hydrology of Himalayan rivers from the Amu Darya to Brahmaputra, the Ganga and its Nepal tributaries, the Mekong, the Burmese rivers, and the Yangtse and the Yellow Rivers are all changing rapidly.Because of the transboundary nature of water, the author’s SINK model cannot be nationally defined. The way a country tampers with its <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-villages-learn-to-cope-with-climate-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-villages-learn-to-cope-with-climate-crisis/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2kUUyQCRaI__QLPtqxk7Nr">river-floodplain ecosystem</a> does not just affect its own population, but spills over the border to people living downstream in another country.The monograph examines each of the ten Himalayan-Hindu Kush river basins. It cites the silt load on the Yellow River, the disruption caused by the three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, dam-building by China on the Mekong and its impact on Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, the Chinese dams on the Salween and Irrawaddy that flow into Burma, the Brahmaputra-Yarlung Tsangpo that flows from China through India into Bangladesh, and the Ganga basin.Studies have shown that only 9% of the total flow of the Ganga is from glacial melt (it can be up to 50% for the Indus) More than 60% of the annual flow of the Ganga is from tributaries in Nepal, and up to 80% of that goes down during the four monsoon months.The Ganga plains in India is one of the most densely-populated parts of the world, and 70% of its area is intensely farmed — mostly along the fertile floodplains. Besides the seasonal fluctuation in its rivers, distribution of water in the basin is also unbalanced, with the western parts much drier than the east.All this has historically had a bearing on <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=15163#.Y2iuEC8RqLc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id%3D15163%23.Y2iuEC8RqLc&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1WIAHiXmzjrQ8_I0qGWzWI">flood control embankments </a>in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, large-scale irrigation projects, and over-extraction of groundwater in the dry season. As the authors note, big flood control projects in India have exacerbated the crisis because sedimentation raises the river bed, embankments are breached, the floodplains are deprived of nutrient-rich silt.Then there are geopolitical implications for the construction of storage reservoirs to <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-geopolitics-of-nepals-water-and-electricity/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-geopolitics-of-nepals-water-and-electricity/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0qajX_1xlL10R2N9ljrZEj">regulate flow and generate electricity</a> from the Ganga’s tributaries in Nepal. But the authors warn, ’Upstream water storage is an attractive proposition to control the spate of flooding but research indicates that it could, at best, reduce the intensity of flooding.’A key paragraph in the text underlines the importance of cross-border interdisciplinary planning on rivers: ‘Monsoons and the resultant high flows in the river system are a key ingredient for the ecological integrity of the whole basin. They allow for the geomorphic actions within river corridors – generation of sediments, their transportation and deposition, recharge of aquifers and water bodies, and help enhance the productivity of land in a landscape that is still closely integrated with the natural system.The integration between the economy, ecology and society needs to be rewired to create harmony and balance preferably at a river basin or large watershed scale to respect the natural process of integration.Alas, within countries and in trans-boundary rivers there is a disregard for crossborder planning, and a fragmented approach that exploits river flows unsustainably and harms the entire ecosystem. These man made disturbances are further upended by climate breakdown.The monograph devotes an entire chapter to expounding in detail about SINK by integrating three disciplines: natural sciences, social sciences and indigenous knowledge. It rejects the historical reductionist engineering paradigm that has governed river planning. Local knowledge and re-defining ‘development’ are also critical in the SINK approach.The authors list governance challenges for professionals while addressing the multiple crises in the Himalayan basin: surviving extreme weather aggravated by climate change, sustainable sediment management, conserving biodiversity, reducing river pollution, and one that is particularly relevant to Nepal: intra-basin hydropower development.Bandyopadhyay, who earlier served with ICIMOD in Kathmandu, hopes that the recommendations will help policymakers to shift from a business-as-usual model to governance that makes integrated water management ecologically and economically sustainable -- and socially just.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022120710124/639057b29c7e80680e0ce16bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="912">Governing the ‘Water Tower of Asia’The Case for a System of Integrated Knowledge for the Hindu Kush HimalayaObserver Research Foundation, New Delhi. 2022119 pages<a href="http://www.orfonline.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.orfonline.org&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1667905031028000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Qd3qkodhO3IewHU3JI_WE">www.orfonline.org</a>Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/government-for-the-future/">Government for the future</a>, Kunda Dixit

Kunda Dixit

It’s sink or swim for the Himalaya

<figure><img width="960" height="640" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131148/637239a69c7e80680e0c73f3jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Acting US Assistant Secretary for Global Public Affairs Elizabeth Trudeau. Photo: GOPEN RAI</figcaption></figure>Acting US Assistant Secretary for Global Public Affairs Elizabeth Trudeau was on a two-day visit to Nepal this week. She earlier served as the US Consul General in Northern Ireland and Pakistan as well as the Department of State’s Director for Press Operations and as a spokesperson in Washington, DC. Excerpts of her conversation with Nepali Times Studio:.Nepali Times: Thank you so much for joining us. Let's start with the objective of your visit, what are you here for?Elizabeth Trudeau: The purpose of my visit is really Nepal and the people of Nepal. So in my job at the Department of State we focus a lot on making sure that we understand what people around the world are thinking and feeling not only about US policy, but about major issues of the day, food security, climate change. And so really, the whole purpose of coming to Nepal, is to understand what Nepalese are thinking and feeling about the issues that impact all of us.Nepal is an important partner of the United States. So it's really critical that I came here first, this is a part of a 12-day trip that I'm taking in Nepal is my number one stop.  After this, I'm going to Dubai, where I'm going to be meeting with some of our colleagues, they're talking to some regional media. And then I go to Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan afterwards. And then next month, I'm going to be traveling to Sub-Saharan Africa and visiting a number of countries.The US government supports democracy, youth, minorities, women, and media around the world. Are those your priorities in Nepal as well? I think what we hear from the United States government is what the people of Nepal want. We work in partnership with Nepal. And these are the issues that are important to the people here. They care about what youth they're thinking, they care about the rights of women, and they care about having a vibrant society. And so we're just happy to partner with Nepal, and contribute really for a global ecosystem that makes life better for all of us.Nepal and the US established diplomatic relations 75 years ago, but in the past it had started looking at Nepal through the India lens. We've seen that change now. What are the changing geopolitical dynamics?What I would say is that Nepal, or any country in the world, needs to be approached as a partner for itself, the United States that doesn't look to Nepal as a country that we use in sort of a balance, we look to Nepal as a partner, as a critical country. And as a country, we want to learn and engage more. What you hear Secretary Blinken Tony Blinken, my boss at the Department of State say is that it's important that we listen as much as we talk. And that's, I think, increasingly what you're seeing in our relationship to Nepal and the people here.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/review/a-survival-strategy-for-nepal/">A survival strategy for Nepal</a>, Kunda DixitDisinformation is disenabling democracy around the world, indeed, in our own country and also in the US. A lot of this has to do with social media companies headquartered in the US. How can the US work to combat disinformation, without infringing on freedom of speech?Such a complex question, and I'm so glad you raised it. And as you mentioned, the United States doesn't have an answer to all of these problems. We see misinformation and disinformation in countries around the world. Just last month, I met with G7 ministers in Berlin. And without fail, every single one of those countries came to the table and said, it is a problem in our country. So the question is, how do we solve it? And I think there's no simple answer, just because there's not one form of it. So it's going to take all of us, it's going to take journalists, it's going to take fact-checking organizations, it will take governments to continue to tell the truth, but most importantly, it's going to take private citizens, because media literacy is a significant part of it. How do you know that you're sharing information that is true? As a citizen, we have a right to know what the truth is. But we also have a responsibility that we have to share only true things. And if that's fact checking, if that's trusting a media, if that's making sure that before we hit share on a social media site, we know the fact. That's on all of us, so it's really going to have to be a comprehensive solution. There is no easy answer.Is there anything that the US is doing to combat disinformation that Nepal can learn from?Well, I would ask the same thing. Is there anything that Nepal is doing that the US can learn from? I think one of the things goes back to media literacy. I've met activists right now in Nepal, who are working on media literacy programs in schools. In the United States, we don't do that evenly. Some school systems do other stone, is there a way that we can learn from Nepal, and work together? So our kids who as we know, are most active on social media, learn early what they can trust? And if they don't trust it, how to question it.What do you think, is the role of mainstream media in the age of social media in safeguarding freedoms, especially in countries like Nepal with a very short history of democracy?I could not feel stronger about this. Journalism is the frontline of democracy. Journalists are the ones who tell the truth, who tell hard stories, and who hold governments like mine to account. I say this as someone who works for the government, sometimes it's uncomfortable, but it's absolutely necessary. And I would say journalists in the United States are not different in that journalists in Nepal, journalists in the United States have a responsibility to hold governments and corporations and individuals to account and make sure that citizens have the information they need. So they can vote so they can be active in their government. Journalists are everything. I mean, they really are the ones who are on the front lines.What has been your assessment of democracy and press freedom and the state of disinformation misinformation in Nepal compared to the global context?I would say, the people I have met during my visit, and I'll say it's too short, I look forward to coming back have been wonderful, just speaking very openly sharing ideas, sharing ideas, not only with us as partners, but among each other. I've been especially impressed with the youth with young people because they bring a passion to this. You had said Nepal is a young democracy so is the United States, we're still learning too. And what I see in Nepal, is that vibrancy, people want to do better. And that's what I'm taking away from this.Today, I went down and saw some of the cultural heritage sites that we've worked in partnership with the government of Nepal as well as private groups, and saw the way that they were really enmeshed in society, that people were there they were visiting. And that was astonishing. It was beautiful to see not only the way that people of Nepal cherish their heritage, but they make it part of their daily life. And I think there's a lesson for people all over the world on that.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-india-us-nepal-china-quadrangle/">The India, US, Nepal, China quadrangle</a>, Akanshya Shah

"Journalism is the frontline of democracy"

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131112/637230969c7e80680e0c2574jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1000"/><figcaption>The Kulekhani Dam opened in 1982, and is still the only large reservoir project in Nepal. Photos: NT ARCHIVE</figcaption></figure>A rapidly warming atmosphere is <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-mountains-are-melting/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">melting Himalayan glaciers</a>, changing the seasonal flow of water in Nepal’s rivers, and increasing the interest of downstream India to regulate water and generate electricity.For Nepal, this is an opportunity to finally tap the potential of the country’s ‘white gold' to meet growing demand for electricity domestically, as well as redress its trade deficit with India by selling <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-precious-electricity-going-waste/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">surplus power</a>.New Delhi’s priority has been not so much electricity but to try to regulate the flow of the Ganges by storing monsoon runoff in its Himalayan tributaries in Nepal, which is why it has lately started showing an interest in building large <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/reservoirs-of-suspicion/hydropower-geopolitics%20,3991" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reservoir projects in Nepal</a>.“There is no doubt that India's real interest is in Nepal’s water resources rather than hydroelectricity,” says Sheetal Babu Regmi, formerly head of the Water and Energy Commission. “And water is going to be an even more critical commodity with the climate crisis.”Almost two-thirds of the water in the Ganges that flows through some of the most densely-populated regions in the world comes from the rivers of Nepal. And most of that flows down in the four monsoon months between June-September.In the rainy season, there are destructive floods in the plains, and for nine months in a year, the rivers have low flow. <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Comment/storing-water-reservoir-Nepal,1042" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Storage dams in Nepal</a> would even this out, reducing flood damage during the monsoon, and make adequate water available the rest of the year.Climate change means that there will be even less water flowing in the Ganges and its tributaries in the dry season in the coming decades.A recent report by India's NITI Ayog showed that nearly 600 million Indians are facing a shortage of water for irrigation and household use, and singled out 21 cities, including New Delhi, as potentially facing groundwater depletion by 2030.Another report by ICIMOD (the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) warned that failure to reduce carbon emissions would lead to the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/a-terrifying-assessment-of-himalayan-melting/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Himalaya losing up to two-thirds of its remaining glaciers</a> during this century.It is therefore strategically important for India to ensure regulated year-round water on the Ganges, and for this it needs a government in Kathmandu that is amenable to allowing it to build large reservoirs on Nepal’s rivers.However, given the historical asymmetry of past Indian projects on <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/the-kosis-sorrow-and-scope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Kosi</a> and Gandaki, river projects are political hot potatoes in Nepal. Governments in the past have fallen because incumbents signed off on river treaties with India that were deemed to disproportionately benefit India.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131112/637230999c7e80680e0c2575jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1185" height="774"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>Which is what makes the timing of announcements of a slew of new Indian investment in river projects in Nepal after Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba-led coalition came to power last year so significant.On 14 June, Nepal’s cabinet gave permission to India’s state-owned NHPC Limited (formerly the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation) to build the 750MW West Seti hydropower project. The China Three Gorges International Corp (CTG) had in 2018 been edged out of the reservoir project with a 194m high dam in western Nepal.The NHPC had made a proposal to Nepal’s Investment Board in May for the construction of the project following promises made by Prime Minister Deuba during his visit to India in March. And while on the campaign trail in Dadeldhura in May, Deuba had revealed that construction of the West Seti would have to be given to India because otherwise New Delhi would not buy electricity off projects with Chinese investment.But experts have raised serious issues with the way such a large project has been handed over to Indian companies without the requisite competitive bidding process, and using a legal loophole to circumvent Nepal’s Public Private Partnership and Investment Act.An agreement to hand over a 51% stake in the construction of the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/business/arun-4/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Arun-4 hydropower project</a> to another Indian state-owned company, Sutlej Hydropower Corporation, was also made in June during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Lumbini.Arun-4 follows Sutlej’s joint venture on the upstream <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/oli-modi-launch-arun-iii/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Arun-3 project</a> in eastern Nepal, and the government was so secretive about the deal that Nepalis came to know about it only after Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) executive director Kulman Ghising signed the agreement in Lumbini with Sutlej Hydropower chair Nand Lal Sharma.Sutlej Hydropower earlier acquired the 679MW Lower Arun project construction rights under former prime minister K P Sharma Oli. The cascade of Indian projects on the Arun River will generate 2,000MW of electricity in eastern Nepal.And with West Seti and Upper Karnali projects, Indian companies will be generating another 2,000MW of electricity from western Nepal for export to India.Additionally, the government is also planning to award the 450MW Seti River-6 project to NHPC. Sources at the Investment Board Nepal say that the Indian company is taking most of the electricity, and offering only 3% of free electricity to Nepal. The NHPC has also submitted a proposal for the 480MW Phukot Karnali and the 1,902MW Mugu Karnali projects in north-western Nepal.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131112/6372309c9c7e80680e0c2576jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="471"><figcaption>Nepal and India signing the Arun-4 hydropower project deal in Lumbini in May in the presence of Prime Ministers Modi and Deuba..</figcaption></figure>The fact that all these projects have been announced only after Deuba replaced K P Oli as prime minister last year indicates that his coalition partners have been friendlier to Indian proposals on river projects than previous governments.Indeed, the 900MW Upper Karnali hydroelectric project which was awarded in 2014 to the Indian private company GMR was given a two-year extension despite its failure to finalise investment.“Nepal is playing a geopolitical game with hydropower, flouting the Constitution and prevailing laws,” says former water resource minister Dipak Gyawali.Nepal’s Constitution stipulates that treaties or agreements related to the distribution of natural resources and their use must be approved by a two-third majority in the Federal Parliament.Other experts however, say that Nepal cannot just sit on its rivers, it must harness them for economic progress, and for this it has to cooperate with India on an equal footing for mutual benefit.“Indian investment in the hydropower sector will benefit Nepal, it will mean the electricity we generate will find a ready market in India and reduce our trade deficit,” says NEA director Kulman Ghising.However, it is the fear that India will derive disproportionate benefit from these joint projects that worries Nepali experts, especially since there is historical precedent for that.India has also put pressure on Nepal by refusing to buy electricity from projects built with investment or contractors from China. India refused to buy surplus power from Nepal this monsoon, wasting 500MW of electricity. Chinese investors are presently involved in building hydropower plants with a total capacity of 1,000MW.Deuba reached an energy-sharing agreement during his India visit in March, under which the Central Electricity Authority of India approved 364MW of electricity imports from six hydropower projects in Nepal -- but only those not built by the Chinese.Foreign policy experts have seen a clear departure on the part of Prime Minister Deuba towards India on river basin projects, with Indian companies being favoured over Chinese ones.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114131112/6372309e9c7e80680e0c2577jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080"><figcaption>The Kosi Barrage diverts water for irrigation in Bihar, and disgorges the river’s excess silt-laden water during the monsoon.</figcaption></figure>In March, the Deuba-led government decided to revoke the license issued to the China Gezhouba Group Company (CGGC) to develop the mammoth <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepals-mega-dam-is-a-mirage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">$2.5 billion Budi Gandaki hydropower project</a> west of Kathmandu, and to build its 263m high dam to generate 1,200MW on its own.The Budi Gandaki has been a victim of geopolitical pingpong for the past five years. In 2017, Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s government awarded the project to CGGC, but the subsequent Deuba government reversed the decision, angering the Chinese. In 2018, K P Oli’s administration restored the contract, only to have Deuba cancel it again this year.Chinese Ambassador Hou Yanqi stated in May that it was “wrong to change policy (on Budi Gandaki) with every change of government … such actions kill the investment climate”.“It is not diplomatically mature to repeatedly undo decisions of preceding governments every time power changes hands,” cautions foreign affairs expert Dinesh Bhattarai.Experts say that India’s policy on it energy imports from Nepal will not only just discourage future Chinese investments in Nepal which is its goal, but also other investors. It will also throw Nepal’s policy of equidistance between China and India off balance.All this is not new. Before Three Gorges, Australia’s Snowy Mountain Engineering Company (SMEC) also pulled out of the West Seti project in 2010 after India showed no interest in buying its electricity. Then the Norwegian company SN Power abandoned the export-oriented 650MW Tamakosi 3 after not getting the green light from New Delhi to buy its power.Most of Nepal’s hydropower projects so far are run-of-river schemes in which generation capacity falls during the dry season. This means Nepal has a power deficit in winter when it needs to import from India, and has a surplus in the monsoon which it has started exporting to India.Having reservoir projects would change that, and give Nepal a more year-round generation capacity, while also regulating water on rivers as a bonus. But even with the present hydropower projects, Nepal earned Rs1.72 billion just in June from selling its excess electricity to India.“India considers water a strategic resource, and is cleverly trying to keep Nepal's energy system under its influence,” explains Dipak Gyawali, the former minister.Clearly, Nepal needs to prioritise domestic consumption of electricity over its export and channel it into electrification of transport, industries and homes. All of this will automatically cut down on petroleum imports, reducing its increasing trade deficit.Selling raw electricity to India is not as beneficial, experts point out, because Nepal is selling its power at a much cheaper rate to India than to domestic consumers. Switching to electric vehicles to reduce Nepal’s petroleum import bill by just 10% would save the country over Rs30 billion a year.The combined capacity of Nepal’s hydropower projects has now exceeded 2,100MW even as average domestic demand stands at just 1,550 MW. Another 2,500MW of electricity will be added to the grid in the next two years, while 3,000MW of new projects are in the pipeline.In a few short years, Nepal will have surplus year-round electricity, and experts say it will be better for the economy to use the power within Nepal to manufacture value-added products than to rely so heavily on selling power to India.They say Nepal needs to rework its energy needs so as to increase domestic consumption, and cut its widening trade deficit with India by reducing petroleum imports rather than just exporting power.

The geopolitics of Nepal’s water and electricity

<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111413118/637230259c7e80680e0c254fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1750" height="1090"/>The Ass can’t figure out what the big deal is about PKD suddenly dashing off to Delhi. It is a time-honoured ritual for Nepal’s leaders to visit the Dilli Darbar before and after they become prime minister.It is also a historical custom passed down from Jang Bahadur’s time to kowtow to the North and grovel to the South, and our Prime Minister-in-Waiting-and-Waiting-and-Waiting is just upholding that tradition. The optics for the audience with Comrade Liu at Khumaltar was perfect: the two met amidst a backdrop showcasing travel memorabilia of (1) Petronas Towers, (2) Statue of Liberty, (3) La Tour Eiffel, (4) a ceramic Bavarian Coat of Arms, and (5) portraits of Friedrich Engels, (6) Joseph Stalin, (7) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, (8) Mao Zedong, and (9) Gautam Buddhas. Only one missing is Pol Pot.It had been touch-or-go for PKD’s Delhi invite, but the Liu visit clinched it. Awesome was promised an audience with Emperor Namo, and off he went. He had warm up meetings with the Spook-in-Chief who was his guardian in Noida during the war years, the BJP party chief, and Shree Jaishankar the Blockadeer. But the “climax” that Comrade Pukada was promised never happened.There are many theories about why Modi cancelled the meeting. One plausible explanation is that Narendra Modi learnt from the way Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made Vladimir Putin cool his heels for a full minute at a photo op in Teheran last week, and thought he could give Pukada an even better welcome by not appearing at all.The other theory is that Modi had actually agreed to meet Swarnim Wagle, and someone messed up. Or maybe the real climax of the visit for the Maoist Supremacist was not an audience with Modi at all, but a summit with Arzoo.This is understandable, since we know how difficult it is for the two to meet in Kathmandu out of earshot of Hubby. And PKD did let it slip that he and Share Bahadur had agreed on taking turns to be prime ministers after November. Maybe he meant to share with Arzoo, not with Her Man.

Ass s

Awesome stuff

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111413118/63722fef9c7e80680e0c253ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3821" height="2788"/><figcaption>Pushpa Kamal Dahal with Jagat Prakash Nadda, national president of BJP. Photo: JAGAT PRAKASH NADDA/TWITTER</figcaption></figure>Barely days after Pushpa Kamal Dahal met the visiting head of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China, Liu Jianchao in Kathmandu, he was off to New Delhi.The undisputed supremo of Nepal’s Maoists has been known to play all sides before, but this puts his balancing act on a whole new level. It also shows that Nepal’s giant neighbours are engaged in a tug-o-war as the country heads for federal and provincial elections on 18 November.Ever since Nepal was founded as a nation state, the country had to do  a tightrope between British India and the Chinese Empire. Recognising this, Prithvi Narayan Shah famously compared Nepal to a yam ensconced between two boulders, and laid out the doctrine of equidistance.Inspired by Mao Zedong, Dahal took on the mantle of ‘Prachanda’ to wage an armed struggle that killed 17,000 Nepalis. At the time, Dahal paraphrased Nepal’s founding king, to describe the country as a “dynamite between two boulders”.Here is a man who in 1998 declared a ‘tunnel war’ to prepare for an Indian invasion, but who spent eight of the ten war years at a safe house in a New Delhi suburb.After the conflict ended in 2006, Dahal has been prime minister twice. The first time, he had to resign after barely a year in power after overstretching his hand in an unsuccessful bid to sack Nepal Army chief Gen Rookmangud Katuwal in 2009, and replace him with a yes-man.It did not go unnoticed that President Ram Baran Yadav had to force him out after some critical late night intervention from New Delhi.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111413118/63722ff39c7e80680e0c253fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="600"><figcaption>Head of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China, Liu Jianchao with Pushpa Kamal Dahal in Kathandu last week.</figcaption></figure>Last week’s visit by Liu Jianchao and Dahal’s sudden air dash to Delhi prove once more that Nepal’s domestic politics is, more than ever, a reflection of regional geopolitics.The Chinese, who had so far been content with letting Nepal languish in New Delhi’s sphere of influence have, since Xi Jinping, been taking a keener interest in micro-managing Kathmandu's power corridors.Beijing’s real worry is not so much about India as it is heightened American activities in Nepal, mainly vis-a-vis Tibet. The active lobbying by the Chinese against the US-supported Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and lately the scrapped State Partnership Program (SPP) pointed to this.The Chinese have openly expressed their <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/one-party-two-countries/">desire for Nepal’s Communist parties to unite</a>, and actually fulfilled that wish with the merger of the UML and the Maoists into the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) after the alliance’s overwhelming victory in the 2017 election.And when Dahal fell out with prime minister K P Oli and the power struggle threatened the NCP, Chinese Ambassador Hou Yanqi shuttled between the Oli and Dahal residences in Kathmandu to patch up their differences.As it turned out, not only did the NCP split, but so did the UML, the MCC was ratified, and the ruling coalition in Kathmandu adopted a Indo-Western alignment.This must have unnerved the Mandarins in Beijing, who did not have to send a high level party emissary just to feel the political pulse in Kathmandu. Liu Jianchao's main aim was to reforge Communist unity ahead of November, and do a repeat of 2017.After all, the Maoists, UML and the Unified Socialists have been trying to suss things out through emissaries. So much so that it has sent off tremors within Nepali Congress (NC), where an anti-Deuba faction led by Shekhar Koirala and Gagan Thapa have been trying to get the party to contest elections on its own.Ironically, Deuba’s own position within his party is now dependent on the coalition staying intact. This in turn has made the NC almost a junior partner in the coalition, with Dahal asserting himself as heir apparent.In a meaningful <a href="https://ekantipur.com/Interview/2022/07/18/165810525150588451.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">interview in Delhi with Kantipur</a>, Dahal talked about meeting his ‘old friend’ in India’s intelligence apparatus who is Prime Minister Modi's National Security Adviser, and hinted that he had blessings on a rotational prime ministership with Deuba — just as he had with Oli.The danger in all this dalliance is that closer ties with India now means closer party-to-party ties with the BJP, and the prospect for instability in the Nepali polity that it entails.All this comes as the Deuba-led coalition completes one year of misrule and miscues. It has outdone the K P Oli administration in pushing through ordinance after ordinance to amend constitutional provisions, has drafted a bill to grant further immunity from prosecution for war crimes among the Maoist militia and the government.With these tectonic forces at play, the ruling class appears unable and incapable of arresting looming economic collapse.Read more: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/editorial/deubas-mixed-report-card/">Deuba's mixed report card</a>, Editorial

Geopolitical tug-o-war over Nepal

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720f249c7e80680e0b795ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="3600" height="2400"/><figcaption>Chinese Ambassador Hou Yanqi and diplomats after seeing off Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi's plane in Kathmandu airport on 27 March.</figcaption></figure>A day after Chinese State Councilor and Foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to Nepal was announced, my Chinese professor cited a Nepali news source which he received from a foreign colleague to inform the class about the three-day visit to Kathmandu.Without timely reporting, Chinese netizens who are dependent on the official press and social media for news had been largely unaware about Wang Yi’s ‘Journey To the West’ until he was already in Nepal on 25 March.‘Journey to the West’ is a proper noun in Mandarin and derived from an extended account of the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who travelled to the ‘Western regions’ of Central Asia and the Subcontinent in the 7th century to obtain sacred texts.Compared to delay in reporting Wang Yi’s Pakistan, Afghanistan and India visits, news on Weibo that he was in Kathmandu on the second day was relatively more timely. The late media reports and posts of his ‘Journey To the West’ could have been deliberate so as to make the news stale, and not create a big fuss.Although Global Times, Xinhua and other state media published articles on the visit, it was not shared on their Weibo pages because it could have likely created undesired discussions. Moreover, the visit coincided with the tragic crash on 21 March of a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 that diverted the attention of netizens.Similar low-key reporting was observed when Global Times and other state-owned media took more than a day to react to the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/mcc-gets-green-light-in-nepal/">ratification of the American MCC grant</a> by Nepal’s Parliament on 27 February.At that time, Chinese cybersphere was rife with reference of other international websites and expressing curiosity about why the MCC news was not trending on Weibo yet. Whether this was intentional or not, it successfully suppressed the hashtag ‘Nepal approved US aid deal’ (尼泊尔通过美援助协议) which reached the Top 11 on Weibo as soon as the state media reported about it.  (Screenshot below)It is most likely that in the case of Nepal, the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/china-lobbying-against-mcc/">uproar over the MCC ratification</a> on Weibo was toned down to welcome Wang Yi’s visit to Nepal. Besides the nine agreements signed between Nepal and China during his visit this week, a bigger takeaway was <a href="https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjb_663304/wjbz_663308/activities_663312/202203/t20220327_10656328.html">Wang Yi’s talks about China’s ‘Three Supports’ for Nepal</a>:1) Supporting Nepal in pursuing a development path suited to its national condition2) Supporting Nepal in pursuing independent domestic and foreign policies3) Supporting Nepal in participating in the Belt and Road cooperation to a greater extentOne article in the Chinese media noted that the second and third ‘supports’ in particular were a clear reminder to Nepal that it should remain independent in its relations with China, and take the long-term bilateral relations into consideration.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720f279c7e80680e0b795bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="528" height="1012"><figcaption>The hashtag尼泊尔通过美援助协议 (Nepal approved US aid deal) trends at Top 11 on Weibo on 1 March, 2022</figcaption></figure>Moreover, Nepal ‘should not be easily deceived by the US investment’ and ‘$500 million is not worth the sacrifice of Nepal's sovereignty’.In a recent <a href="https://weibo.com/ttarticle/x/m/show/id/2309404752126701339032?_wb_client_=1">interview with the China’s state-media</a>, Wang Yi admitted that his visit to South Asia came at a time of the spreading spillover effect of the Ukraine crisis and threats to world peace. He confirmed that China’s neighborhood holds a top position in Beijing’s overall diplomacy, saying it was “better to be a close neighbour than a distant relative” to South Asian countries.While Nepal’s own mainstream press focussed on the nine agreements inked during Wang Yi’s visit and photo-ops with Nepal’s leaders, Chinese media and cybersphere were fixated on Nepal’s reiteration of the One China Policy and commitment towards ‘<a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1256876.shtml">never allowing any forces to use the Nepali territory to engage in any anti-China activities</a>’.Prof Xue Xiaorong of the School of Marxism at Fudan University, who has over 170k followers on Weibo, posted that the ‘explanatory notes’ on MCC ratification was Nepal’s way of expressing goodwill to China, and the reason behind Nepal’s firm commitment to Minister Wang was to reassure China that it has not sold out its sovereignty to the Americans.This was met with sarcastic comments by some Chinese social media users who urged China not to trust a ‘sold country’. A <a href="https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0YcotBZyChOXSThRyIy6UQ">WeChat page reporting on Nepal, Xin Niboer (新尼泊尔),</a> dug out a relatively obscure news item of a small protest on Sunday in Janakpur against the 9-point agreement between Nepal and China.<img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101148/63720f299c7e80680e0b795cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="585">Besides the expected meetings with President Bidya Devi Bhandari, Prime Minister Deuba, Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka , Wang Yi also met two Communist leaders Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the Maoist Centre and K P Oli of the UML .While Wang Yi’s talk with Dahal were reported with predictable remarks from both sides thanking each other for their effort and support, the meeting with Oli was cited in the Chinese media with greater sentiment.“<a href="https://www.guancha.cn/internation/2022_03_28_632119_s.shtml">You are an old friend to the Chinese people</a>,” Wang Yi is reported to have told Oli, reminding him that it was when he was prime minister in 2019 that <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/president-xi-in-kathmandu/">Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a historic visit to Nepal</a> which ‘achieved important outcomes and brought bilateral relations to a new level’.This reporting could signal that the tables may have turned on <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/what-the-chinese-think-about-nepals-maoists/">Dahal’s positive impression in China as a ‘Maoist’ leader</a>. Some comments on Chinese social media remarked that ‘this was not the same Prachanda’ as the one in 2006. Others joked that <a href="https://news.ifeng.com/history/4/200703/0319_338_89975.shtml">Prachanda</a> was the rabbit in the race with the turtle and had underestimated the ‘intensity of the struggle’ back then.Another comment called Wang Yi’s meetings with Nepal’s two top Communist leaders as sending a message to the Americans that ‘if they can interfere in Nepal’s internal affairs then so will China’.Regardless, as much as Nepal has stressed on supporting One China Policy, China has equally stressed on non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.It was not lost on many that Wang Yi’s visit to Nepal came just over a month after Nepal’s Parliament approved the MCC. This undoubtedly is a factor that has made Beijing rethink its Nepal policy, which is an extension to the whole region.In his interview in state media, Wang Yi stressed that his South Asia tour was to stress the importance to work with neighbours, and ‘<a href="https://weibo.com/ttarticle/x/m/show/id/2309404752126701339032?_wb_client_=1">to build an Asian community with a shared future</a>’.Aneka Rebecca Rajbhandari is a Masters student of Chinese Politics at Renmin University of China.

Reaction to Wang Yi’s Nepal visit in Chinese media

<figure><img width="640" height="359" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221114101144/63720eb29c7e80680e0b7933jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption></figcaption></figure>In 1991, as the editor of Deshantar weekly, I was part of a visiting team of journalists accompanying Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala on his state visit to China. Nepal had just become a constitutional monarchy after the Peoples’ Movement, there was no Google yet, and we did not have too many China watchers in Nepal.To prepare for my Beijing trip, I was directed to the Center for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS) where I first met Dhurba Kumar. He gave me monographs and papers to read, and the professor knew so much that he overwhelmed me with information.Dhruba Kumar took great interest in geopolitics vis-a-vis Nepal, and was a self-taught expert on China. Over the years, as Nepal transitioned into multiparty democracy, the Maoist conflict and finally became a republic, I came to rely on Dhurba Kumar for guidance and contributions for Himal Khabarpatrika, the magazine I edited.He did not miss any details, and could present them in fluent, easy-to-grasp language, translating concepts from academese into Nepali or English with equal ease.In 1986-87, when the Indian Peace-keeping Force (IPKF) landed in northern Sri Lanka, there was fear that like Sikkim, Nepal could be the next place for Indian intervention.The theory was that the Indian Army could foment internal conflict in Nepal as well, and use the same pretext of ‘peace-keeping’. The IPKF soon got embroiled in a war with the Tamil Tigers and had to retreat.Through this period, I relied on Dhruba Kumar for sage advice and analysis. Under his tutelage and with Director Khadga Bikram Shah, CNAS produced quality research on the Nepal dimension of the Indian Army’s presence in Sri Lanka.When India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1997, there was consternation in Nepal that we would be downwind for any radiation fallout. I interviewed Kumar about the implications for Nepal of antagonistic nuclear-armed neighbours with both of which Nepal had cordial relations. No one else at the time had the expertise and insight to analyse this from a Nepali perspective. I sought Dhurba Kumar’s inputs on many other security matters for Himal. Having not written in Nepali previously, he was initially reluctant. I persuaded him that writing in Nepali would not be as difficult for someone with his educational background. Dhruba Kumar was not one of those arm-chair analysts, he did painstaking research, looked at issues objectively and his conclusions would be evidence-based. When the Maoist conflict was at its peak, his analysis of the geopolitical dimensions of the insurgency would be a cover story in Himal. Two years ago, we approached Dhurba Kumar to write for us once again after Shikshak began to co-publish the magazine Niti-Bimarshsa. We had been constantly in touch with him up until the time he was admitted to hospital. He was not meeting people during the pandemic, but I visited him with a copy of Niti-Bimarshsa.Nepal has signed the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project with China, and the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant has been ratified by Parliament. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in Nepal, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is going to New Delhi soon, and a US delegation arrives next month.To make sense of this new geopolitical Great Game churning in our neighbourhood, we would have relied on Dhruba Kumar to explain what the real implications for Nepal would be. Nepal has now edged closer to the United States, the other global power that China is suspicious of. We must win China’s trust, while keeping a balance with India. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a lesson of what can happen if we lose that balance. What is Nepal's relationship with China? How do we maintain cordial relations with both neighbours, while keeping both at arms length? And what should the basis of Nepal’s foreign policy be in the context of the Ukraine-Russia war?As journalists, those are questions we would have posed to Dhurba Kumar if we were trying to make sense of the region today. In fact, we did send him an email recently asking for an interview, but there was no answer. We then went to his house, and found out that he was not well. I cannot see anyone else in Nepal’s academia today that can make the kind of sharp dissection of current affairs and security matters like Dhruba Kumar did. That is not to say that there are no other analysts, but none come close to doing justice to the issues like he did.The demise of Nepal's foremost analyst of political and security issues  leaves a big void not just for us journalists, but also as a researcher and adviser to Nepal’s foreign policy establishment. There is a vacancy for the post Dhruba Kumar has left.Translated by Shristi Karki from the Nepali original in <a href="http://himalkhabar.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://himalkhabar.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1648281701876000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0POzKUeeR0wZ4JHUWmuVAV">himalkhabar.com</a>

geopolitics