China-South Asia cooperation: Sky’s the limit
China and South Asian countries are moving towards greater cooperation. Covid-19 has opened up an era of high-value cooperation in health between China and South Asian countries. This cooperation can be described as a common humanitarian bond to save lives.
Previously, China and South Asian countries cooperated in healthcare in limited areas. In the post-Covid-19 situation, human health seems to be the common entry point to facilitate overall socio-economic rebuilding of societies in South Asia
China last April offered South Asian countries help in accessing Covid-19 vaccines. China’s State Councilor and foreign minister Wang Yi hosted a conference attended by neighbors Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. India did not attend. During the raging pandemic, China had expressed “deep sympathy for and sincere condolences to the Indian people.” In China’s understanding, ties with the Republic of India are the most important one in South Asia.
The meeting highlighted China’s willingness to set up an emergency supply reserves with South Asian countries in the fight against Covid-19.
China has been ready to promote vaccine cooperation with South Asia in the form of donations, commercial procurement and bottling, and production to ensure a stable supply.
Wang Yi and his counterparts also discussed post-pandemic economic recovery, and ways to maintain a sound international environment for the development of all countries. China promised to “uphold the concept of a community with a shared future for humanity, stand firmly with the people of South Asian countries, and join hands and unite until all countries in the region eventually prevail over the pandemic”.
Also read: Indian ignorance on Nepal
Boosting recovery
On boosting post-epidemic recovery, China, last July, facilitated the establishment of a China-South Asian Countries Poverty Reduction and Cooperative Development Cooperation Center in Chongqing.
China and South Asia (C-SA) are major centers of global populations. Of the world population of 7.52 billion in 2020, the C-SA region made up 42 percent. If governments here can cooperate on poverty-alleviation, this region will have made a big contribution to humanity.
China has indeed contributed greatly. General Secretary Xi Jinping declared at a ceremony marking the centenary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that China has brought about a historic resolution to the problem of absolute poverty in China. This is not only a great achievement of the CPC and the Chinese people, but also important for global anti-poverty efforts.
The World Bank’s per capita cut-off line for absolute poverty is $ 1.90 and the global proportion of those under absolute poverty is 9.30 percent. But the SAARC region has 15.2 percent people under absolute poverty. Meanwhile, China has drastically brought down the rate of absolute poverty. There can be a lot more scope for the C-SA cooperation on poverty alleviation in terms of both concepts and targeted development programs.
Inspired by successes of targeted poverty alleviation programs in China, Siddhartha Vanasthali Institute, a temple of learning in Kathmandu with 2,000 students, plans to pursue a program of cooperation with Chinese academic institutions on “using education opportunity for poverty alleviation of targeted disadvantaged students” whereby identified body of students will get help with their fees and accommodation.
The Chongqing Poverty Alleviation Center aims to pool strength, integrate resources, and exchange wisdom to support and help the South Asian countries' economic development and livelihood improvement, jointly promoting the cause of poverty reduction.
Also read: Post-Aukus challenges for Nepal
Chongqing, an autonomous cosmopolitan city in Southwest China, is willing to share its poverty relief experience with South Asian countries, and cooperate on poverty eradication projects, in the process of building the center into a new platform for friendly cooperation between China and South Asia.
Tweeting about the meet, Nepal’s ex-foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali had stressed on the “need for strengthened regional and international cooperation for anti-Covid response and recovery”.
Non-state organizations in China have been seen active in negotiating with local governments and institutes to collect anti-pandemic resources such as masks, protective suits, ventilators and other items to help India, as well as other South Asian countries. China has the willingness, capacity and resources to help India and other South Asian countries grapple with Covid-19.
China wants to cooperate with India “through multiple channels in helping it fight the epidemic.” In Nepal’s case, China’s Vero Cell vaccines have alone covered over 50 percent jabs administered to the people thus far, and China has produced over 50 percent of the total anti-Covid vaccines globally as well.
Non-alignment for cooperation
Nepal’s new Minister for Foreign Affairs, while attending a High-level Commemorative Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Belgrade in October, underscored the need to galvanize South-South cooperation to liberate and uplift countries and peoples from the clutches of poverty, inequality and deprivation. Minister Dr. Narayan Khadka said, “For NAM to stand relevant to influence global agendas of common concern, it must forge unity, cohesion, cooperation, and solidarity among its membership. NAM must be internally strong to foster goodwill and cooperation so that division and discord do not surface to undermine the unity of the Movement.”
However, any country’s nonaligned position is increasingly challenged by global powers.
Lin Minwang, a China scholar, in his October 13 analysis published in the Global Times, observed India’s renunciation of its non-alignment policy. He says: “New Delhi's justification for ‘defecting’ to the US camp is the ‘China threat’.”
Also read: The US failure on MCC compact
He says India's self-aggrandizement is more directly reflected in the Sino-Indian border issue. “The Indian media seem to have a special preference for fabricating and hyping the China-India border issue. In fact, India is also doing this to the US to show how hard India works to contain China so that the United States feel its ‘strategic value’,” he writes.
Unexpectedly, reliance on the United States and its camp has given New Delhi some illusory confidence. It is just that. In the end, India will suffer, the scholar has concluded.
I believe none of us will like to see our neighbor suffer. As Confucius said: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
To rise, recent developments in China-South Asia cooperation show that construction and reconstruction of new inter-regional indigenous and autonomous institutions are prerequisite in areas of non-traditional sources of security threat like health and poverty alleviation.
China’s leadership is aware that like China, South Asia is not a liberated region. Self-interest and confidence of this region is colored by divisive power plays and colonial mindset. This has created serious risk for the region’s independence, internal cohesiveness and nonaligned integrity and credibility.
I wish China would treat South Asia as a doctor, full of compassion, full of required supportive mechanisms to revitalize and rejuvenate a Trans-Himalayan pathway of connectivity, development, reform and exchanges. China’s strong positivism will contribute to building a South Asia that can sustain rejuvenation on its own reformed core foundations.
Based on the writer’s presentation on 20 October 2021 at a webinar organized by the Research Center for Economy and Cultures of “South Silk Road” in Sichuan University Jinjiang College’s “Jinjiang Oriental Forum” 2021.
The author is Secretary General, China Study Center Nepal
Opinion | Nepal’s electric addiction
The government policy of increasing electricity consumption by lowering consumer tariffs will lock Nepal into an inefficient pathway that reduces competitiveness and may prove to be economically damaging in the long run.
Nepal has two policies that often appear to be at odds with one another.
On the one hand, the government is actively seeking to increase electricity consumption to help absorb the expected large bump in hydropower generation. The recent tariff proposal by Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), the country’s monopoly electric utility, underlined an effort to increase consumption through lower tariffs.
There is broad public understanding about the need to increase electricity consumption. The idea is routinely amplified by the NEA and the government, which have both made the message the centerpiece of their public outreach. It has captured the public consciousness, so much so that each night, every Nepali now considers leaving their lights on as they sleep, just so they can contribute to increased electricity consumption.
On the other hand, Nepal has also adopted the National Energy Efficiency Strategy, which aims to double the rate of energy efficiency in the economy by 2030. Several sectors in Nepal offer large opportunities for energy efficiency, which could result in significant reductions in energy use.
The need for energy efficiency has yet to enter public consciousness. When it does come up for public discourse, it is met almost immediately with derision and bewilderment. Why are we pursuing efforts to reduce electricity use when there is a national movement to increase electricity consumption?
Also read: Opinion | History lessons for energy sector
The goals for increasing electricity consumption and energy efficiency, however, are not at odds with one another. But it does illustrate an error in how the need to increase electricity consumption is characterized. What the government and the NEA are trying to do in order to increase electricity consumption is actually “electrification.” The policy for increasing energy use doesn’t encourage consumers to keep the lights on more than they need (and certainly not while they sleep) or industries to run their equipment when not required.
The intent of the policy—electrification—is to encourage consumers to shift from other fuels to electricity. For example, if you were driving a petrol or diesel car, then switch to an electric one. If you were cooking with gas, then switch to electric cooking. Electrification leads to an increase in electricity consumption because it switches consumers from other fuels to electricity. But it does not intend to, or encourage, those who were already using electricity from using more electricity to do the same thing—that would simply be inefficiency.
Perhaps the confusion between increasing electricity use and “electrification” can be forgiven as mischaracterization. But it shouldn’t be ignored. Its impact on Nepal’s long-term economic growth and competitiveness will be damaging.
The public perception on the need to increase electricity consumption, coupled with the strategy of keeping electricity tariffs low (or free in some cases), encourages adoption of low-quality, low-efficiency products. This in turn increases the cost of production, reduces competitiveness, and lowers the quality of life.
Also read: Opinion | Unfree minds
Consider poor households that now will now get free electricity up to a certain level. Most of these consumers will now opt for low-quality, low-efficiency products, which will be cheaper, and nor will these products result in any savings. For example, many such customers will opt for cheap low-quality LEDs, which provide lower levels of light quality and fail more frequently. In the long run, poor households will have spent more on shoddy LED bulbs than they saved from free electricity. The market will be flooded with poor quality products rejected from other parts of the world. A better policy approach would be to price electricity but subsidize the cost of high-quality efficient products and appliances for the poor.
The story will be the same with industrial consumers. The NEA has increased fixed tariffs on electricity for industrial customers, while holding or reducing per-unit costs. While this will provide the NEA with a secure income stream, it will incentivize industrial consumers to opt for less energy efficient equipment. Such choices have a lasting impact on competitiveness by increasing costs, decreasing productivity, and stalling modernization.
Countries around the world, including where electricity was abundantly cheap, learned that the trick to economic growth wasn’t merely promoting low energy costs but simultaneously creating incentives for efficient energy use. Nepal must learn from those mistakes.
Opinion | The world ain’t Squid Game
“Mugunghwa Kkoci Picot Seuminda… Mugunghhwa Kkoci Picot Seuminda”!
I was shocked to hear the ‘red light, green light’ Squid Game tune during a post-Dashain family gathering. Must be a caller ringtone on one of my cousins’ phones, I thought.
I inquired who it was and, to my shock, found out the source—my four-year-old niece Samby! I could not believe she was singing it and asked her to do it again and she sang it with such ease that I got jitters. I asked my cousins if they had let their young kids watch Squid Game or if the little ones were present while the parents watched it. Apparently, these kids learned it from YouTube.
Probably the most talked-about series on Netflix after Breaking Bad, Squid Game was released in September 2021. Netflix calls it the company’s biggest series launch ever, topping 111 million views globally, beating Bridgerton at 89 million. Netflix, which claims 142 million households watched the Korean series, says it has added four million new subscribers post-Squid Game success.
A teenage nephew suggested I watch the series, with a disclaimer that it is extremely violent and disturbing in places. I am not going to lie—I enjoyed it thoroughly. In my defense, I would like to say that I wanted to watch it for all the hype it was creating. After that, I watched Alice in Borderland (Japanese thriller series) and Chestnutman (Danish thriller series), both suggested to me on Twitter. If you have not watched Squid Game and are planning to watch it sometime soon, I would like to give you a spoiler alert. I have tried not to spill much detail though.
In a nutshell, it’s a story of financially broke individuals getting lured into a deadly game by an omnipresent surveillance system controlled by the elites. The villains—capitalists/elites—do character studies, and scope out the potential players whom they come to know inside out, often better than the poor souls themselves. The carrot of millions of dollars in cash is dangled. In this winner-takes-all game, there can be only one winner while hundreds of others die.
Also read: Playing Squid Game in Nepal
The hard-to-swallow part for a lot of lovers of this series is the critical title it got during the reviews. It is constantly called a “Commentary on Capitalism” by a lot of viewers and critics. Yes, it is an imagined world that is divided into struggling classes willing to kill without remorse and to survive to entertain the faceless elites. It is a story of two economic strata, mainly the lowest rungs who are desperate for money and the richest who are bored with all the money in the world and need that adrenaline rush and thrill through violence. The series presents the richest as out-and-out hedonists—depraved, bored, and cruel, which is a problematic stereotype.
In the world Squid Game presents, the poor must either stay poor, which is too deterministic because class mobility happens a lot, or they have to kill each other to survive and climb the economic ladder. That is the kind of capitalism Squid Game celebrates and mocks at the same time. It celebrates capitalism by offering the worst possible version of it, while the same is also mocked by the lead character, who stays kind despite his riches.
People might miss that the chap who wins forty billion won (around $33 million) does not use it for a while. Then he starts giving it to others, which again shows the humanity in him, something he never loses throughout the series.
As someone mentioned on Twitter, it is a sophisticated version of the likes of Battle Royale, Hostel, Hunger Games, The Hunt, and others that initiated this kind of genre, which part of viewers call ‘sick’: The rich run out of ways to have fun and create games where the poor get killed.
With an impact value of close to $900 million according to a CNBC news report, on an investment of $21.4 million, Netflix has already decided to invest more in Korean Drama after the splendid success of Squid Game.
In my opinion, this shows the appetite for violence and blood splatter in global movies and series has increased even in us as viewers. Squid Game has methodically structured a new world philosophy, that to survive and be successful you need to betray and even kill. Movies and dramas have a huge impact on people’s thinking and lifestyle. Thus a series like this should come with a strong and visible disclaimer that it is work of fiction and should not be copied or imitated in real life, even if it’s just a children's game from the ‘80s. Let it also prompt some soul-searching among all its ardent views.
Opinion | History lessons for energy sector
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Maoists submitting their 40-point demand, a milestone widely regarded as the start of the Maoist armed uprising in Nepal. In the years that followed, 17,000 Nepalis lost their lives, thousands more were displaced, the economy was shattered, monarchy abolished, and a new federal republic of Nepal took shape.
We look back to that discarded moment of history–the submission of the 40-point demand–to ask if the bloodshed, violence, and turmoil that followed could have been avoided. Does it hold a lesson for us?
On 4 February 1996, Baburam Bhattarai and Pampha Bhusal arrived at Singha Durbar to submit their 40-point demand but were denied entry. In protest, Bhusal sprawled out on the road, blocking traffic. In the few minutes of commotion that ensued, a minister’s convoy was held up.
So much of history turns on an instant.
The minister happened to recognize Bhattarai. He called the Prime Minister’s office. Sher Bahadur Deuba was the PM then.
The two were ushered in. They got to meet Deuba briefly, and present the Maoist demands, which included a threat to start an armed uprising within two weeks if the demands were not met.
Deuba was occupied that day as he was preparing for a state visit to India. He shrugged off the meeting, and later that week, left for India. Less than two weeks later, the Maoists attacked the police post at Holeri, Rolpa. The armed Maoist uprising had begun.
History has come full circle.
Today, Deuba is Prime Minister again. He is busy preparing for a visit to Glasgow, United Kingdom to attend the UN Climate Change Conference.
Also read: Unfree minds
Pampha Bhusal sits across the table from him as part of his cabinet, as the Minister of Energy, Water Resources, and Irrigation.
As Bhusal sprawled out before the gates of Singha Durbar 25 years ago demanding to meet Deuba, did anyone have the foresight to imagine them huddled together in a cabinet meeting?
Had Deuba been provided a glimpse of the future when he was rushing through the meeting 25 years ago, would he have listened more carefully? Could history have been altered, the bloodshed of the armed uprising avoided?
If Bhusal and the Maoists had similarly been provided a glimpse of the future and were able to see that their demands—the abolition of monarchy, secularism, federal republic—were a lot closer within reach, would they have chosen a less violent path that avoided the bloodshed of the armed uprising?
The lesson for us from this incident should be that change doesn’t need to be all turmoil. Everything doesn’t need to be destroyed. Change can also be managed. For that, we need to find the courage to recognize and appreciate the underlying forces that are shaping change.
Nepal’s energy sector must draw from the lesson and listen more carefully to the underlying forces shaping it.
The sector is in crisis. The government’s narrative of excess electricity production has suddenly made Nepal’s hydropower potential seem irrelevant. At the same time, 80 percent of the country’s energy use still relies on traditional biomass fuels. Energy accounts for the largest share of imports.
Also read: Systemic dysfunction
The government’s response to this crisis has been to centralize authority and decision-making. It is working actively to centralize the design of Nepal’s energy system and make it structurally more reliant on government’s authority.
The forces sweeping the electricity sector are tugging in the opposite direction. Distributed renewable energy technologies are eroding the authority of electric monopolies and enabling customers to be both users and producers of electricity. Digital technologies are reshaping how consumers and distributed technologies interact with one other, conduct business, and optimize production and use. Distributed renewable energy technologies are empowering customers to do more in a cleaner and sustainable manner than centralized systems have ever been able to do.
In 1996, Prime Minister Deuba shrugged off Bhattarai, Bhusal and the Maoists. Today, through its policies and program, the government is shrugging off the movement that is building around distributed renewable energy.
For Bhusal, the energy minister, who 25 years ago lay on the road in front of the gates of Singha Durbar demanding decentralization, it is an ironic twist of history that she is now creating policies that are centralizing our energy destiny in the hands of a few.
