Via Kathmandu

In pursuit of becoming an Asian hegemon, China deploys a strategy in which Nepal is the pawn

On the face of it, who could object to Beijing's seemingly unexceptionable position that Nepal is a natural area for cooperation between it and New Delhi? After all, Sino-Indian support for Nepal's development is a win-win for the two Asian giants as well as their landlocked and under-developed Himalayan neighbour, is the narrative being pushed. Except, to use sporting terminology, Chinese desire for cooperation with India is nearly always expressed in our half of the field. Put another way, it's akin to New Delhi expressing the desire to classify, say, Mongolia as the 'natural' arena for cooperation between the two nations, helping the Mongolians develop their country in the bargain. You can bet your bottom Yuan we would get laughed out of the Great Hall of the People for suggesting as much and if that didn't get you to back off muscle would inevitably be flexed. 

These thoughts come to the surface because of the latest balloon floated by Beijing which has proposed an economic corridor through the Himalayas connecting China and Nepal, which it has urged India to 'join' in a spirit of cooperation so as to share the fruits of development and boost growth in Nepal. Kathmandu, naturally, is simpatico. New Delhi, once again, will look churlish if it declines outright and be the patsy if it goes along this path which ends, have no doubt about it, with an eventual acceptance by the smaller nation-states in this part of the world of Chinese suzerainty and India expected to lump it.

In the hardnosed world of geopolitics and gaining strategic depth, which is the only reality whatever well-intentioned fools living in cloud cuckoo land may think, the Chinese are playing it brilliantly. Equally, there is no getting around the fact that the political leadership in India over the past two decades since the Nepalese monarchy started showing signs of wobbling and the Maoist insurgency there, selectively backed by China in certain theatres, began to gain traction has been short-sighted and pusillanimous in the extreme. Looked at from Beijing's point of view, at a time when the party-state's focus from the 1980s to the first decade of the 21st century was on capacity-building, infrastructure expansion and pushing economic growth while simultaneously clamping down on internal dissent, New Delhi let it slide in strategic terms. So, one can hardly blame an opponent from taking full advantage of the state of play and assiduously build its assets in Nepal including the current Beijing-leaning Prime Minister KP Oli.

Our choices are somewhat limited at the moment - after all, strategic neglect of our spheres of influence inherited largely from the British colonial state has been a hallmark of India policymakers in the region for decades, from the Maldives to Sri Lanka and Nepal. Working on rebuilding the state-to-state equation with Nepal including engaging with Oli while doing what it takes covertly to nurture a pro-India sentiment among the Nepalese people is about the only damage-control we can do for now.