Nepal: New Portrait Of Chinese Pragmatism?

Reports of China having opened direct contacts with Nepal’s Maoist rebels, and possibly having offered arms, have added to the uncertainty gripping Nepal’s peace process. It is difficult to view Maoist chairman Prachanda’s note to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, strongly protesting the letter sent by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, outside this emerging dynamic.

Neither Beijing nor the Maoists have shed light on the nature, substance or even veracity of the reported contacts. Yet any such development would not amount to a “dramatic reversal” of Chinese policy, as sections of the Nepalese and Indian media have suggested.

True, China has refused to consider the Nepalese rebels as Maoists, arguing that their violent actions have denigrated the name and image of the Great Helmsman. Chinese officials, unlike their Indian and American counterparts, have studiously refused to call the rebels terrorists.

Beijing, moreover, defied much of the world by refusing to criticize King Gyanendra’s Feb. 1 2005 takeover of full executive powers. Whether that stemmed from China’s traditional confidence in the Nepalese monarchy or from its desire to see the three domestic players find a solution without external meddling – or perhaps even a careful mixture of both – will continue to be debated. While pragmatism remains the pivot of Chinese foreign policy, its nuances provide important pointers.

If China has opted for realpolitik, with the Maoists having joined the political process, it must be seen in the context of Nepalese developments since King Gyanendra was forced to cede direct control. Indications of a chill in bilateral relations emerged amid reports that Prime Minister Koirala’s government had moved toward reopening the Office of the Dalai Lama in Nepal.

During his meeting in Geneva with Deputy Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing protested the proposed resettlement in the United States of 5,000 Tibetan refugees in Nepal on the basis of official Nepalese travel documents.

Oli, for his part, underscored the gravity of the situation by telling a House of Representatives panel that the Chinese government has taken these matters seriously. So seriously indeed that Beijing expressed its inability to provide duty-free access to Nepalese exports from July 1 as agreed during the royal regime. Chinese Vice-Minister Wu Daewi is due in Kathmandu this week to discuss these and a host of other issues.

Internal And International Dynamics

Beijing’s pragmatism on the Nepalese Maoists is logical also from the standpoint of internal and international dynamics China faces. The rise in public disturbances within China amid a growing urban-rural economic divide has goaded Beijing toward preventing bolder and coordinated demonstrations across villages and provinces.

In March, the National People’s Congress approved a five-year plan implementing measures to address China's growing wealth gap. These measures aim, among other things, to transfer wealth through various means from the booming coastal regions to the less-developed countryside.

A hard-line Maoist government in Nepal spewing tirades against the leadership in Beijing for having abandoned the basic tenets of Maoism could revive nostalgia among sections of the marginalized for the certitudes of Mao’s times. By themselves, the Nepalese Maoists may not represent a serious source of destabilization. However, Beijing is aware of the clandestine support foreign powers could extend to fan the flames of discontent.

If moderating the Nepalese Maoists made good domestic sense for Beijing, it also held promise as a prudent element of its increasingly assertive South Asia policy. Beijing could hardly have been oblivious to the reality that New Delhi’s stepped up its effort to build a broader opposition front between the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the Maoists in November last year after King Gyanendra played a major role in including China as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

This shift in the geopolitical locus of SAARC as well as a solid display in December of China’s preponderance in the emerging East Asian community served to sensitize India. Indian media have begun covering China as a beat that contains elements of cooperation, competition and confrontation. Even in entrepreneurial Mumbai, paeans to the synergies between China’s computer hardware capabilities and India’s software prowess have ceded space to the geopolitical implications of Golmud-Lhasa railroad and the reopening of the Nathu-La trade route.

A shared interest between China and the communist front in India to prevent a firmer American foothold in Nepal may have influenced the political changes of April. If the aftermath failed to thrill the Chinese, they were not alone. The Maoists’ resentment of the SPA government’s reluctance to share the glory of triumph must have opened up the prospect for a new realignment. For those within the country and abroad tempted to conclude that the Maoist political leadership, neck-deep in the peace process, had reached the point of no-return, the rebels’ northern option must have come as a stunning revelation.

For China, political proximity with the Nepalese Maoists would fit into its wider global strategy. The post-9/11 warmth in Sino-American relations has given way to a more sobering analysis of each other’s motives and expectations. The U.S. Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) in February contained the fingerprints of neoconservative advocates of the containment of China.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized Washington for attempting to play up a “non-existent Chinese military threat.” Chinese analysts, for their part, saw the QDR’s designation of their country as a “strategic threat,” along with the U.S. focus on enhancing its Pacific military assets and increasing its long-range strike capability, as clear preparations for a future conflict.

The contours of a containment strategy were also evident in the Bush administration’s reorganization of the State Department bureau responsible Central and South Asia. Of the 13 countries falling under the bureau, eight border China. Now the U.S. Congress appears set to vote in favor of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, seeking to advance civilian nuclear cooperation despite New Delhi’s weapons program.

For the Maoists, the first group in Nepal to detect in our “ground realities” an imminent “encirclement” of China by its adversaries, bonhomie with Beijing always resided within the realm of possibility.

ENDS

© Scoop Media