Asia
Fearing communists’ unification, Nepal gives a blow to Beijing
Expansionist China, after having been unsuccessful in its attempt to construct a road on the Bhutan, Sikkim, Tibet tri junction, trying to establish its proximity to India’s North eastern states from the security point of view and not able to finally establish its military sovereignity in the disputed area called Doklam, after Bhutan and India’s strict objections, the over ambitious dragon has once again faced a severe blow at the hands’ of one more SAARC nation, another Himalayan country and India’s trusted friend of decades, Nepal.
The prime minister of Nepal a non communist Deuba has cancelled the huge contract of the Chinese firm known as Ghezauba group, worth billions of dollars for construction of a 1, 200 megawatt hydropower project. The project was the part of the over ambitious one road one belt initiative of the Chinese government to establish its trade and political hegemony in the Asian subcontinent, especially.
This is not the unilateral decision of the Nepalese prime minister but had been endorsed by the entire cabinet. Scrapping an awarded project to a Chinese company amounts to a sort of an open defiance (of) a mighty world power who is trying to woo Nepal, a tiny Hindu nation under its influence by way of various developmental projects, economic assistence including coercive tectics with rail links.
The project scrapped is named as Budhi Gandaki Hydropower project and was worth 2.5 billion dollars. It seems, Nepal is now gradually trying to come out of the dragon’s grip particularly when national elections in the Himalayan nation are nearing and the entire left political parties are uniting together with the dragon’s financial support to challenge the current political dispensation.
When communist Prachanda was at the helm in Nepal, Nepal-China relations touched a new height with the latter getting enough opportunities to start various bilateral projects in the Himalayan nation belying decades of long term friendship with India. China had been trying since long to diplomatically or through economic appeasement influence Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh to surround India from the security point of view but it hadn’t succeeded so far despite umpteen attempts.
Now, it’s trying to make trade and infrastructural inroads in these SAARC NATONS having already fully triumphed in the matter of Pakistan, India’s traditional foe.