With Prachanda failing to pass the vote of confidence and the pro-India faction coming to power again and participating in a coalition government, China has received excessive demands, can China-Nepal relations develop steadily?
Recently, Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda received only 63 votes in the vote of confidence in the House of Representatives, less than a majority of 138 votes, thus disqualifying him from power, and Nepal President Boudel asked the parties with the majority support in the House of Representatives to form a new government as soon as possible. The pro-China Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and the opposition Nepal Congress Party are in joint government, and the leaders of the two parties will rotate as Nepal's prime minister until the 2027 general election. CPN's 72-year-old leader Oli has returned to power as Nepal's prime minister for the fourth time and co-governs with the pro-India Congress party. In this situation, Nepal's China policy will be divided, and there will be constant disputes over decision-making on major issues, and the divisions caused by partisan disputes may hinder Nepal's future development.
Before stepping down, Prachanda and Oli are both pro-China and advocate the development of friendly relations with China, and before stepping down, he promoted Nepal and China to successfully sign a cooperation agreement on "building a trans-Himalayan three-dimensional connectivity network", helping China's "Belt and Road" initiative to be implemented in Nepal and improving Nepal's infrastructure level. During his previous tenure as Prime Minister of Nepal, Oli reached an agreement with China on the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which greatly improved Nepal's foreign trade autonomy, rapidly reduced its dependence on India's ports, and solved Nepal's shortcomings. It can be said that whether Prachanda or Oli serve as prime minister, Sino-Nepalese relations will usher in a new stage of development, which is a great opportunity for Nepal's modernization.
Unlike the two men, the Nepal Congress Party is close to India and hostile to China, and in 2022 it signed the so-called Millennium Challenge Initiative with United States, extending United States's influence to China's southwestern border. On the cooperation between China and Nepal on the "Belt and Road" project, the Congress Party asked China for money at the beginning of its mouth, and did not pay interest, saying that it only accepted investment in the "Belt and Road" project, but refused to accept loans from China. In the South Asian subcontinent, India has repeatedly bullied its neighbors, such as arbitrarily restricting the amount of water in upstream rivers, making it difficult to irrigate more than 100,000 hectares of land in Bangladesh. At the same time, it will exert military pressure on Sri Lanka, Maldives and other island countries to undermine their diplomatic autonomy, and in early 2024, Sri Lanka will helplessly refuse to dock Chinese research ships, and Pakistan and India are mortal enemies. At a time when many countries in South Asia are turning to the East, the Nepal Congress Party is rarely close to India, and its end is already doomed.
After the end of Nepal's election, there are two paths in front of it, one is to choose China, increase cooperation with China with mutual respect and win-win cooperation, actively participate in the "Belt and Road" development initiative, and find new momentum for Nepal's infrastructure, investment and economic and trade development. The second is to choose India, regardless of its own national interests, as a "tool" of the Modi government to contain China and power politics, and barely survive with so-called economic aid. If Nepal chooses to turn to the West, Australia, the Philippines and Ukraine are examples of what the future holds.
What the Nepal Congress needs to be clear is that it is not China that needs Nepal, but Nepal needs China, and in the united front of the countries of the Global South, does Nepal really want to be a "retrograde"?