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Kathmandu: In consonance with the ‘Neighborhood First Policy’ there has been a continued momentum in bilateral ties with Nepal, India said in a report. An annual report prepared by the Ministry of External Affairs states that there has been substantial progress in greater connectivity—be it physical, economic, energy, digital, cultural, or focusing on infrastructure development and capacity-building. Since May 2014, there have been 15 exchanges at the head of the state/government level between the two countries. During this period, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Nepal five times, while prime ministers of Nepal visited India eight times since Modi came to power. According to the report, in 2022, there were two back-to-back prime ministerial visits, with then Nepal PM Sher Bahadur Deuba visiting India in April 2022, and the Indian PM visiting Nepal in May 2022. One of the achievements of 2022 is the issuance of a joint vision statement on power sector cooperation. According to the report, there has been intense defense cooperation between the two countries. The report also highlights what it calls ‘further momentum’ in the power sector with Nepal. Nepal has become power surplus and started exporting power to India, the report states, adding that India has given Nepal the consent to export more than 400 MW to India. Nepal exported more than Rs 600 crores (Rs 6bn) worth of power to India this wet season. With this, electricity has become one of Nepal’s largest exports to India, the report says. Nepal is India’s 11th largest export destination, up from 28th position in 2014. In 2021-22, Nepal constituted 2.34 percent of India’s exports. The bilateral framework for trade is anchored on India-Nepal Treaty of Trade and Agreement of cooperation to control unauthorized trade, revised in 2009, both treaties were automatically renewed for a further period of seven years in October 2016. Nepal’s main imports from India are petroleum products, iron and steel, cereals, vehicles and parts, and machinery parts. Nepal’s major items of exports include soybean oil, spices, jute fiber and products, synthetic yarn, and tea.

A Chinese technical team is in Kathmandu to initiate the feasibility study of the Keyrung-Kathmandu railway line. China has agreed to conduct the study under grant assistance. The team is holding consultations with the Department of Railways, Kathmandu. During the then Foreign Minister Narayan Khakda’s China visit in August this year, China had agreed to conduct the study.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Nepal said this arrival is an important step toward the implementation of both countries’ leaders’ consensus, and a solid step to turn Nepal from a land-locked to a land-linked country.  The two countries had reached an understanding on this issue during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Nepal visit in 2019. Pre-feasibility study of the railway, which identified several bottlenecks, has already been completed.  The two sides are yet to agree on the investment modality of the railway. 

The Chinese delegation landed in Nepal a day after CPN (Maoist Center) Chairperson Pushpa Kamal Dahal assumed office as prime minister.  China has also been urging Nepal to give more impetus to its signature Belt and Road Initiative. It may be noted that Kathmandu’s relations with the northern neighbor had thawed during the premiership of Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba.

One of the vital trade points with China, the Tatopani customs point, remains literally shut after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, hampering trade between the two countries.  In the past five years since the signing of the BRI framework, negotiations between the two sides have focused on preparing legal documents. The only other achievement in this period was the inclusion of Nepal-China Trans-Himalayan Multi-Dimensional Connectivity Network, including a cross-border railway, in the joint communique of the second BRI conference in 2019. 

BRI is basically about taking loans from Chinese banks to build infrastructure. But Nepali leaders who are in conversation with Chinese leaders have been emphasizing grants for the BRI projects. For instance, in 2018, the KP Sharma Oli-led government negotiated with the Chinese on the Keyrung-Kathmandu railway. The Oli government reportedly told the Chinese side to provide a grant for the railway project.

China has congratulated Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal expressing willingness to work with the new government to deepen the bilateral ties.  “Beijing observed that the election of Nepal was conducted smoothly and we congratulated Dahal for becoming the new prime minister,” Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told a routine press conference on Monday. “We believe that with the joint effort of the Nepalese government and people, and with the consultation and coordination of various parties and political forces, Nepal will maintain stability and economic and social development.”

Mao further said that China attaches great importance to China-Nepal relations, and is willing to work with the new government of Nepal to expand and deepen friendly exchanges and cooperation between the two countries in various fields. “The two countries will jointly build a high-quality Belt and Road network, injecting new impetus to the development and prosperity of China-Nepal friendship from generation to generation,” she added.  Over the last one year, the relationship between the Sher Bahadur Deuba government and China did not go well due to several factors. Beijing felt that the Deuba-led government had tilted toward the West.

Chinese officials openly said that the engagement between two countries slowed down after the formation of the Deuba government. In this period, China expressed its concerns through Dahal, who was a vital coalition partner of Deuba. Beijing also maintained a close communication with Dahal about its interests in Nepal. 

“It [Beijing] was always pushing for a left unity in Nepal so Dahal’s appointment as new PM is obviously a good message for us,” said a Beijing-based analyst.  The main concerns of Beijing are implementation of past agreements reached between two countries, implementation of Belt and Road Initiative and preserving its core security interests.

Scholars in Tibetology from China and overseas have shared studies and discussed the fixed religious rituals and historical conventions of Living Buddha reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism through a sideline event of the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council, during which the jurisdiction of Chinese central government over Dalai Lama’s reincarnation was further reaffirmed. The event, namely the “International Webinar on the Religious Rituals and Historical Customs of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas,” was held on Monday from an offline venue at the China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing. “The affairs related to the reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama belong to the domestic affairs of Tibetan Buddhism in China, which must respect the wishes of the Chinese Tibetan Buddhist community and the majority of religious believers, and accept the management of the Chinese government,” Zheng Dui, Senior Fellow and Director-General at the China Tibetology Research Center (CTRC), said at the event in Beijing on Monday. “This not only has sufficient historical basis, but also conforms to the provisions of the current law, which cannot be shaken by any separatist forces,” he pointed out in his keynote speech. Ten experts and scholars of related studies made speeches during the event, demonstrating the development of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism, the religious rituals and historical customs of the reincarnation, and the practice of the sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism. The reincarnation of Living Buddhas is an institution of succession unique to Tibetan Buddhism and is governed by fixed religious rituals and historical conventions. The institution of reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has been in existence for several hundred years, according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The 14th Dalai Lama himself was found and recognized following religious rituals and historical conventions and his succession was approved by the then central government. Xizang (Tibet)-related affairs have been a tool of the US and other Western countries used to smear China on human rights and other issues. In December 2021, the US named Undersecretary of State Uzra Zeya as “special coordinator for Tibet.” A year before, then US president Donald Trump signed the so-called “Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020” – a bill which grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs. For a period of time, overseas “Xizang independence” forces and Western politicians have hyped up the issue of the reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama for political purposes, ignoring the tradition of the Buddhism, and acting as an adverse influence on the religion. The central government and relevant local governments in China have never relaxed and never given up their management of the reincarnation of the Living Buddha. The Chinese central government of today adheres to the historical conventions of the reincarnation of Living Buddhas, managing the social and public affairs of the reincarnation of Living Buddhas, while overseeing institutionalized and regulated processes based on relevant laws, Zheng stressed. Xiao Jie, deputy director at the Institute of Contemporary Studies of CTRC, noted that the reincarnation of living Buddhas has been practiced in China for hundreds of years. It has long been known as religious rituals and historical conventions, and has been confirmed by Chinese laws and regulations. He believed that some countries’ proposing that “Tibetan Buddhism has become a world religion” and regard the Chinese government’s management of the reincarnation of Living Buddhas as “undermining the freedom of religious belief,” is a great distortion of the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhist living Buddhas. “The main believers of Tibetan Buddhism are in China, and in the familiar environment of this group of people, it is undoubtedly reasonable to search for and identify the reincarnated living Buddha in the way they are used to, which also reflects the Chinese government’s ‘people-oriented’ concept,” Xiao said. The management of the reincarnation affairs of the Living Buddhas, including the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, is a social responsibility that the Chinese central government must perform throughout the course of history, Wang Yanzhong, director at the institute of Ethnology and Anthropology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences noted. “The issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation has never been a purely religious issue, nor the personal power of the Dalai Lamas in the past, but a major political issue involving the ownership of sovereignty,” Fang Sanping, a scholar from the Sichuan Tibetology Institute, pointed out at the webinar. “After hundreds of years of development and evolution, the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation system has formed a complete set of religious rituals and historical conventions, the core of which is that the central government is the highest authority and has the highest decision-making power,” Fang said. Jewon Koondhor, a Member of the CPPCC National Committee and Vice President of Xizang Branch of Buddhist Association of China, detailed at the event that after more than 1,300 years of development, Tibetan Buddhism has completed integration with the local natural geographical environment, humanities and folk culture with characteristics and background of Chinese culture. “This historical process has fully proved that the localization and sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism is an inevitable requirement for the survival and development of the religion itself,” said Jewon Koondhor, a returned Tibetan from Switzerland and is also serving as the Vice Chairman of the Xizang Autonomous Region of the Overseas Chinese. Sarbottam Shrestha, First Vice President of Arniko Society in Nepal, said at the event that the reincarnation system of Living Buddhas is one of the iconic characters of the sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism. He said that religions adapting to socialist society is an important component of the sinicization of Buddhism and other religions in China. At the webinar, Birgit Kellner, director of the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, shared the achievements in cooperation between Chinese and Austrian experts in protecting Sanskrit texts from Southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region. She noted that Xizang’s Sanskrit texts hold rich historic and cultural value, and protecting and studying on them has become a part of Chinese government policy. She hopes to maintain close communication with Chinese colleagues and further promote academic research of Sanskrit. (Shan Jie/Global Times)