Nepal borders the most sensitive Chinese province of Tibet and Tibet borders another equally sensitive province of Xinjiang which is seeing a surge in terrorist activities these days, and for that reason alone, China wants Nepal to remain peaceful and stable. From the Chinese perspective, a chaotic and unstable Nepal will be used as a base by anti-China activists to stir up troubles in Tibet and Xinjiang. For 50 years, monarchy in Nepal made sure that Nepal would deal sternly with any anti-China activities, for example, crushing of the Khampa rebellion in 1974, and monitoring of free Tibet activities in Nepal. However, with the political changes in 2006, China lost its traditional ally and is yet to find a party that it can trust.
The Maoists were not trusted from the initial days because the Chinese thought of them as a force that was being used by the forces hostile to Chinese interests. In this context, it was natural for the Chinese to distance themselves from the Maoists. The Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu had to issue a statement asking the Maoists not to abuse their great leader’s name. In a press conference organized by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Feb 3, 2005, the foreign ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, when asked about Chinese government’s reaction to the insurgent group in Nepal using Mao’s name, said: “When this question was asked last year and the year before last, I said that this group had nothing to do with China, and we felt indignant that they usurped the name of Mao Zedong, the great leader of the Chinese people.” In the Chinese media, they were refereed to as rebels until 2006. For the Chinese, Maoists did not represent a nationalist force as they claimed themselves to be. And the Maoist leaders’ criticism of Chinese leaders as reactionary and revisionists did not go unnoticed in Beijing.
China would have a hard time supporting any regime that appears either too close to it, or to India. China would not want to antagonize India by supporting any regime that is too critical of it because of its trade and other interests with it or support a regime that is too close to India because of its own security concerns.
Toward the end, when the Chinese realized that the Maoists were emerging as a powerful force in Nepali politics, they made contacts with the Maoists but it was in informal capacities. The Chinese, who did not see any rationale behind a communist revolution in Nepal even when they were exporting revolution to third-world countries in the 1950’s and 60s, were naturally baffled at the prospects of Nepal turning into a communist state in the 21st century. More than anything, they feared the chaos that Nepal would witness in the absence of a strong and stable government, and its impact on China’s national security. In an interview to Himal Khabarpatrika (March 14-28, 2005), the then Chinese ambassador to Nepal Sun Heping, when asked about Chinese security concerns in Nepal, replied: “You can change your neighbors but you cannot change your neighboring countries. The geographic location of Nepal, which shares borders with Tibet autonomous region (of China) is very much crucial for stability and prosperity in Tibet.”
In retrospect, they were not wrong. Last year in September, the Chinese government asked Nepal to deploy 10,000-strong paramilitary force along the China-Nepal border. It is interesting to note that the defense white paper released earlier that year included Tibet as a national security threat for the first time. The defense paper issued in 2007 listed only Taiwan as China’s internal security concern.
Chinese on the one hand invited Pushpa Kamal Dahal to the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2008, on the other hand, withdrew their offer to build the outer ring road in Kathmandu, which it agreed to build during the official visit of then Crown Prince Paras in 2004, soon after Dahal’s visit. The stated reason for this was the difference over the issue of who was going to pay the compensation for land, but if China really wanted to build the outer ring road, it would have done it as a gift to New Nepal. By taking its hands off the project, China sent a powerful signal to the new rulers to not take China for granted and to stop anti-China activities in Nepal. However, the signal was not picked up by the concerned leaders.
Then, as a way to assess Nepal’s new rulers, China floated the idea of a new treaty. Hu Jingyue, Chinese vice foreign minister came to Nepal on Feb 25, 2009 with a draft of the proposed treaty and an invitation to Dahal for a nine-day official visit to China. Dahal accepted and the date was fixed—May 2, 2009. However, Dahal’s visit was officially canceled on April 25. Although its difficult to tell exactly why the Maoist chairman chose to take action against Chief of Army Staff Rookmangad Katawal 10 days before his scheduled visit to China, there are some who believe that it was to cancel the visit. Gen Katwal was just made a scapegoat. Interestingly enough, China hasn’t insisted on the new treaty after that, which gives currency to the argument that China wanted to test the importance Nepal’s new rulers attached to relations with China.
In what could be termed as another major diplomatic blunder, Dahal in an interview published on May 11, 2009 in The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, stated that “The Chinese came uninvited.” This in effect implied that Chinese foreign minister, vice foreign minister, high-level People’s Liberation Army delegations were not invited to Nepal, and they barged their way in. This also did not go unnoticed in China. Therefore, when Dahal went to China in October 2009 and met Chinese President Hu Jintao, as a quid pro quo, the Chinese media did not give any importance to the meeting. Although Dahal met Hu during the opening ceremony of their national games in Jinan on Oct 16, if one searches through Chinese news archives, there is not even a single story of this meeting, and one wouldn’t find anything of this meeting on the popular Chinese search engine, Baidu. Even the Chinese Embassy in Nepal ‘s Chinese language web page that has a section on Nepal news does not mention Dahal’s meeting with Hu Jintao. Dahal should understand that his meetings with the Chinese leaders or the invitation to him to visit the Shanghai Expo in September represent nothing significant from the Chinese perspective. The Chinese are following the policy of “never appear too hostile, never appear too friendly” when it comes to dealing with the Nepali Maoists. It is also important for the Maoists to note that China invites leaders of other political parties as well, and the Communist Party sends its representatives/delegations to attend the conventions of various political parties in Nepal.
All this makes one ask the reasons behind a series of diplomatic blunders. One interpretation is that the Maoists did not understand the changing dynamics of regional politics. By appearing too close to China at times and by appearing too close to India at other times, they displayed their incompetence when it came to foreign policy. China would have a hard time supporting any regime that appears either too close to it, or to India. China would not want to antagonize India by supporting any regime that is too critical of it because of its trade and other interests with it or support a regime that is too close to India because of its own security concerns. A point made crystal clear by the Chinese by not pushing very hard on SAARC membership and not supporting the regime that proposed to make China a SAARC member! Therefore, the Maoist leadership would be advised to maintain equiproximity with both our neighbors, and not appear leaning to any, just as King Mahendra managed to do throughout his rule. The need of the hour is finding the balance between two of our neighbors, and any government that can maintain a balance between the two giants by assuring them through words and deeds that Nepal would not let any forces hostile to either of them operate from its soil is certainly bound to get the support of both our neighbors. Otherwise, the talks of making Nepal a transit point for trade between India and China and benefiting from the economic growth of our neighbors would be, well, what it is now, a pipedream.
trailokyaa@yahoo.com
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