Nepal’s Prime Minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, is scheduled to visit China on 26-31 December 2009. The visit, which was repeatedly rescheduled1, comes at a time when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been intensively reaching out to Nepal in a move to offset earlier political miscalculations, and with the declared aim of tackling Tibetan exile protests in Kathmandu as well as the continuing outflow of Tibetans who cross the Himalayan border clandestinely in order to travel to India to see the Dalai Lama and visit exile relatives2.

The restoration of democracy in Nepal in spring 2006 triggered a temporary backlash of Chinese policies towards the Himalayan country. Beijing’s support for the Nepalese king’s bloodless coup, with army backing, in February 2005 elicited widespread contempt amongst Nepal’s political class, resulting for a while in unprecedented freedom of speech and assembly for the Tibetan exile community in Nepal. The Chinese authorities however, quickly launched a hectic diplomatic initiative in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, in order to mend relationships with the parties now back in power. These efforts saw their first success when Nepal’s security forces suppressed demonstrations by Tibetan exiles protesting about the events in their homeland in spring 2008. The demonstrations ended only when Nepal’s government threatened to expel any Tibetans who continued protesting after the Olympics Games had been held. Beijing raised its annual assistance to Nepal from 100 million Yuan (UK£9.2m; US$14.6m; EUR€10.3m) to 150 million Yuan (UK£13.7m; US$21.9m; EUR€15.4m) during then Foreign Minister Upendra Yadav’s China visit in 2008, a move originally proposed in July 2006. The Chinese focused then on lobbying Nepal’s political establishment, at the same time as pursuing contacts with the army3. The current, advanced phase of Beijing’s diplomacy comes with some delay, apparently due to a government crisis in Nepal in spring 2009.

China’s current diplomatic offensive began in July 2009, with former Chinese ambassador to Nepal and a politburo member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Zhang Jiuhuan, calling on Nepal’s Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala. On 01 September, a seventeen-member delegation, led by Zhang Gaoli, a member of the Central Committee of CPC, met the new Prime Minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal. During her following five-day visit to China, Foreign Minister Koirala met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on 10 September in Beijing. She also met China’s Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu. Later in September, a delegation of high-ranking Nepali Armed Police Force (APF) officers attended a meeting in Lhasa to discuss the proposed deployment of a contingent of Nepal’s Armed Police Force (APF) on the Nepal-Tibet border4. On 24 November, a five-day “courtesy visit” by a ten-member Chinese delegation arrived, led by Hao Peng, executive deputy chairman of Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). The delegation met Maoists’ chairman and head of the opposition, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, and with Foreign Secretary Madan Kumar Bhattarai to discuss bilateral relations and other issues. Talks with Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, Foreign Affairs Minister Koirala, and Home Minister Bhim Bahadur Rawal were held on 25 November. The Chinese delegation also called upon the doyen of Nepali politics, Girija Prasad Koirala, (father of the Foreign Minister), and Minister for Local Development Purna Kumar Sherma. The next delegation, an eight-member team of the Chinese Army, reached Nepal on 04 December. It was led by Su Yutai, said to be the “second-in-command of security officials who have been in charge of Tibetan security”. The delegation met Defence Minister Bidya Devi Bhandari, and visited the Nepal Army and officials at the Defence Ministry. The latest, six-member, Chinese military delegation, reached Kathmandu on 15 December and called on Defence Minister Bidhya Devi Bhandari. The delegation invited her and Secretary of Defence Ministry Nabin Kumar Ghimire to China after Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s visit.

Chinese demands and Nepali responses

All Chinese delegations focused on the demand to suppress allegedly “growing anti-Chinese activities in Nepal”, whereby those were seen, for instance by Central Committee member Zhang as “prevailing in Nepal and Nepal-China border region”, and, at least for the latter, as “China’s internal security matters”, as deputy TAR chairman Hao put it. The endeavour was described by PRC public security minister Meng as a “China-Nepal law-enforcing cooperation” for which his country would assure “necessary assistance”.

Nepalese politicians reacted with rare unanimity in asserting that Nepal’s territory would never be used as base for activities against its neighbours and reiterating vocally their commitment to the ‘one-China policy’. In a speech delivered on 12 October at the inauguration of a Chinese cultural festival in Kathmandu, Nepal’s PM, Madhav Kumar Nepal, emphatically stated: “I would like to assure our Chinese friends to become assured on behalf of Nepal that the Himalayan republic will not allow any anti-China activities on its soil”. His political opponent, Maoist leader Dahal, assured the TAR delegation that his party was “always committed to [the] one-China policy”. Just before leaving for Beijing in September, foreign minister Sujata Koirala declared “We will reiterate our one-China policy and reassure them that we won’t allow and tolerate any anti-China activities in our country”. She also made clear her commitment, probably to impress her hosts, by saying that on the eve of her visit, she had conferred with Nepal’s army, police and Armed Police Forces (APF) chiefs “about security matters”. “We are very serious about this issue”, she said.

Security Minister Meng in Beijing, gave his own version of the meeting with Koirala, stating that both countries had “vowed to strengthen cooperation on border security”. He later quoted the Nepali Foreign Minister as pledging that her government would “tighten security measures on checkpoints along the borders” in order to “prevent illegal entries”. These statements indicate that, next to silencing Tibetan exile protests in Kathmandu, China’s current Nepal policies aim to tackle the problem of Tibetans who cross the border clandestinely (because the Chinese authorities effectively refuse to issue them with valid papers) in order to visit relatives in Nepal or India, or to see the Dalai Lama, or to go on pilgrimages to India. These people are treated as de facto refugees by the UNHCR and other international organisations. Nepal’s Home Minister Bhim Rawal spoke in an interview on 03 October about the necessity to deploy a border force “to make our border secure and free from infiltration from any criminal activities”. “We do not want to allow any elements to carry out activities in Nepali soil against any of our friendly countries”, he added. With that, he effectively adopted the Chinese authorities drive to criminalise these people and associate them, against all evidence, with the political activities of Tibetan exiles in Nepal. The fact is, however, that already their ambiguous status in Nepal forces them to maintain a low-key profile and refrain from political activities. Nevertheless, in Nepal, these people are being increasingly identified as ‘anti-China activists’, ironically adopting in reverse a narrative disseminated by the Chinese authorities that ‘troublemakers’ in Tibet are exiles infiltrated into Tibet to destabilise ’social harmony’. In February 2009, for instance, members of the Maoist Party youth wing detained five newly arrived Tibetans and handed them over to the local police, accusing them of crossing into Nepal illegally in a bid to take part in campaigns against the Chinese government. In the same month, Nepal’s then Defence Minister said that Nepal would tighten controls on the border “to prevent Dalai Lama supporters from entering the country”.

An opportunity to show the new determination to curb Tibetan protests in Kathmandu arose when ten Tibetans attempted to demonstrate against the 01 September delegation. They were arrested, but released in the evening as is the usual practice. On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’ Republic of China (PRC), however, riot police detained 40 Tibetan exiles protesting outside a Chinese embassy building in Kathmandu. Police said they had also arrested 38 Tibetan exiles after receiving reports that they intended to gather for anti-China protests. Ahead of the sensitive anniversary, two further Tibetans were preventively detained for 30 days, although in summer 2008, Nepal’s Supreme Court effectively outlawed the practice of preventive detention without evidence of unlawful activities.

For the time being, there are indications that the deployment of Nepal’s Armed Police Force (APF) along the Tibetan border, as requested by the Chinese authorities and officially being implemented on the Nepalese side, is not progressing as smoothly as planned. In Mid-October, the APF had conducted a feasibility study for positioning its personnel in the border areas of Rasuwa and Mustang. The study concluded that guarding the northern border, in difficult terrain, would be an “arduous undertaking”. Simultaneous to the visit of the second PRC military delegation to Kathmandu in mid-December, a three-day Border Security Workshop 2009, was organised by the APF at their headquarters to discuss new internal security arrangements. Additional Inspector General of the APF, Sanat Kumar Basnet said that the border with China was not discussed on this occasion, but confirmed that two Border Security Offices will be established on the border with India and one on the border with China by the end of the current fiscal year. The only development relating to the decision, however, is that the government is going to deploy an APF troop with 237 personnel in Sindhupalchwok, i.e. in a sector where the APF was already stationed. The APF has also proposed installing Border Observation Posts (BOP) in other border areas. It appears unclear though, when this will happen.

Nepalese demands and Chinese responses

Nepal’s general demands to China are twofold; financial aid, either in the form of investment or more often general annual assistance, and infrastructural development, reflecting Nepal’s aspirations to gain access to Chinese markets. Foreign minister Koirala presented an ambitious portfolio of demands that carried on standard requests from Nepal’s politicians and government. She requested Chinese aid for the construction of a dry port at Tatopani, on the border with Tibet; for the construction of an international airport in Pokhara, Nepal’s second most important town; for a 400MW hydro-power project in Jajarkot; as well as US$1 billion dollars in loans to develop infrastructure.

She also requested the extension of the Tibet railway to Nepal’s border, a demand which has for a long time fired the imagination of entrepreneurs and bureaucrats in Nepal. Although Koirala’s understanding was that her requests were met with a “warm response”, in the case of the railway at least, publicly available documents suggest that the construction of a Nepal branch of the Tibet railway is not on the agenda for the immediate future. Reuters news agency did report in April 2008 that a railway link to the Tibet-Nepal border would be in place within five years, but no known plans released by China’s railway administration indicate that this is the case.

China has increased the scholarship quotas for Nepali students in China, a demand which had been discussed for years. Up to 200 will be able to study at Tianjin University, out of which 20 “meritorious students” would be provided with full scholarships by China. China also allotted 2 million Yuan (UK£183,255; US$292,850; EUR€205,250) for the construction of a Nepalese consulate building in Lhasa that will replace the current one. The construction of a “friendship building”, apparently for meetings between Nepalese and Chinese soldiers, on Nepalese territory at the Tibet border was also agreed. With that, the agreed projects appear to respond more to Chinese tendencies to finance prestige projects rather than any with a more substantial impact. More importantly, China pledged NRs28 million (UK£233,680; US$373,333; EUR€261,680) military assistance for “non-lethal weapons”, logistics support, training for officials and communication equipment for the Nepalese army. Apparently, China intends to keep its link to the Nepalese army, which had backed the King’s coup of 2005 and is considered a stronghold of Nepalese nationalism and opposition to India. China’s provision of annual food assistance of 3 million Yuan (UK£274,585; US$435,000; EUR€307,600) for impoverished districts of Nepal along the Tibet border, and its announced intention to open its roads on the Tibetan side of the border to ferry food into these regions, which are barely accessible from the Nepal side, may appear generous. But it is less so if one remembers that the use of Chinese roads to supply these regions had been banned in September 2006, following the resumption of democracy and discussions about a possible reopening of the Dalai Lama’s liaison office in Kathmandu. The then king, as a quid pro quo for China’s support, had shut down the bureau in 2005. Access to these crucial roads was denied again during the events of 2008 until the end of the Olympics. Furthermore, by supplying the local population from its side, China creates convenient dependencies in the border area, for instance in order to monitor Tibetans secretly crossing the border into Nepal5, and potentially checks the influence of Tibetan refugees who frequent such regions, as teachers, for example. Finally, reports in Nepal’s press that China would also be “positive about” providing duty-free access to 497 Nepali goods, have yet to be confirmed. Up to now, open or indirect protectionist restrictions have kept most of the few products Nepal could potentially export at bay6.

1: The PM’s visit had been planned since December 2008. It is unknown whether its postponement was due to Nepal’s chronic political instability or other reasons.
2: This is the first Update in a series that will explore China’s policies towards Nepal and their relevance for Tibet.
3: On these developments, see: Struggling for influence in Nepal – http://www.tibetinfonet.net/content/update/135.
4: See: Nepal deploys armed police along Tibetan border – http://www.tibetinfonet.net/content/update/148
5:It might be also reminded, that the empoverishment of this Nepalese high mountain areas is intimately linked with policies of the early decades of the PRC, which made many of them from trade and transit regions to strategic glacis.
6: See Restrictions on the import of religious items from Nepal

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