Dahal’s relationship with India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has significantly improved, and he does not see the southern neighbor posing any immediate threat to his government.
After the India visit, Prime Minister Dahal is now preparing to visit China, another key neighbor of Nepal. Although Beijing has yet to send a formal invitation, the trip will probably take place in the last week of July or first week of August. Very few Nepali prime ministers get an official invite to visit China. Instead, they get an invitation to attend an event, where they also get to meet Chinese leaders. But Prime Minister Dahal, who is also the chairman of CPN (Maoist Center), is likely to get an official invitation to visit China. When Dahal was in New Delhi for a four-day official visit, his close confidant and senior Maoist leader Agni Prasad Sapkota was on a China visit. Upon his return, Sapkota told media persons that he conveyed Dahal’s willingness to visit China as soon as possible. Dahal was invited to participate in the Boao Forum for Asia held in March, but he skipped the event as he was planning to visit India first. He later told Parliament that the Chinese ambassador understood his compulsion of visiting India first. After joining the peace process, Dahal’s foreign policy mantra was ‘striking a balanced relationship’ between India and China, though it was evident that he leaned more toward Beijing. During his second tenure as a prime minister in 2016, he began the task of sending special envoys to New Delhi and Beijing to highlight his policy of balanced relationship. In the initial months, he seemed ‘pro-India' but in the final weeks of his tenure, he took some important decisions including signing of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which pleased Beijing. This time too, he seems to be following the same policy of maintaining a cordial tie with India and at the same time making some substantial progress with Beijing, mainly in the areas of BRI. This policy suits both Dahal and his party. Leaders close to Dahal say the party leader is in favor of making some progress on BRI during his China visit. As Nepal is not in a position of taking expensive loans from Chinese banks for BRI projects, Dahal hopes to convince Beijing to develop the projects under grant and give a message to the world that the BRI has moved ahead. Some Maoist leaders have even suggested Dahal to ask the Chinese leadership to waive the loan on Pokhara International Airport and list it under one of the the BRI projects in Nepal. As the chairman of the party and prime minister, Dahal does not want to give a message that there have been disturbances in his balanced foreign policy. But the intra-party dynamics of Maoist party tells a different story. Party’s senior leaders after Dahal are open and strong advocates of pro-China foreign policy. Senior leaders like Narayan Kaji Shrestha, Agni Sapkota, Barsha Man Pun, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Dev Gurung all are in favor of a China-friendly policy. As a result, Dahal is under pressure to make some progress on China related issues. China’s key priority right now is implementation of past agreements, mainly those points agreed during Xi Jinping’s visit to Nepal in 2019. After 2016, Nepal and China have signed many strategic agreements of long-term implications. Former Nepali ambassador to China Tanka Karki says since there are already well-defined strategic issues between Nepal and China, their implementation should be the priority of Dahal’s China visit. Karki adds since Dahal has spelled out the policy of friendly ties with India he should also make sure that his government accords due priority to its relationship with New Delhi in the coming days. Dahal’s China trip is also expected to set the tone for Nepal’s engagements with other non-Western forces like Russia. He had played a vital role to secure the visit of National Assembly (NA) Chairman Ganesh Timalsina to Russia in April. After the visit, Russia has floated a proposal at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, outlining various areas of cooperation between Russia and Nepal. Timalsina is currently in China, where he has met Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, to discuss ways to advance cooperation between the legislative bodies of the two countries. Maoist leader and former House Speaker Agni Sapkota had also played a vital role to engage with China at a time when the relationship between the Sher Bahadur Deuba-led government and Beijing was not at its best. In February 2022, Sapkota invited Chinese speaker Li Zhanchu and signed a six-point agreement, bypassing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to the agreement, both parties would exchange information on each other’s legislature, supervisory and government practices. When the Deuba government was in power, the relationship between Kathmandu and Beijing took a hit, particularly after Nepal raised the issue of border encroachment by China in Humla district. China was mainly concerned over the growing American influence in Nepal, stating that it could jeopardize its security interests. Now, China is confident that its security interests would not be compromised because of the Dahal-led government. Like with India, according to some leaders, Dahal is not in favor of entering the disputed issues like the Global Security Initiative (GSI) with Beijing. Of late, China has been emphasizing that Nepal should maintain a balanced and neutral position. This means Beijing expects Nepal to treat both neighbors on equal footing. In an opinion piece published in The Global Times by Zhang Jiadong, director of Center for South Asian Studies, Fudan University, says the core of Nepal’s policy toward China and India is to keep Nepal neutral and independent. “The Himalayan country tries to strike a balance between China and India, carefully assessing the relative influence of China and India in Nepal and adjusting its policies accordingly,” the article says. “However, it is indeed becoming increasingly challenging for Nepal to maintain a balance between neutrality and seeking its own development, as seeking development necessitates improving relations with both China and India.” As its rivalry with the US intensifies, China has spoken less about the Indian influence in Kathmandu, instead reacting more on Nepal-America relationship. This time, Prime Minister Dahal has given an indication that his priority is to engage on the economic front with global powers and staying away from the disputed issues.
