Though Nepal has fallen to China’s new era of Communistic imperialism, it has suddenly risen to the challenge of nation-building.
Read this note on “Nepal: Peace in your own time.”
It seems Mr. Baburam Bhattarai’s pragmatism and Kathmandu’s resilience are paying dividends (and the Maosit insurgents are reaping those rewards). The future of Nepal may be brighter today than it has seemed in the past few years, but sadly this future is fully now within the shadow of China. No longer truly independent, the Maoist puppet-government of Nepal now takes its cues from Beijing. Hopefully it will not descend into complete mindless craven puppetry like North Korea. National death and absorption like Tibet is probably more welcome than North Korea’s embarrassment. Hopefully Nepal will be left its dignity and some modicum of self-determination and soul. Nevertheless, it does the bidding of China.
Which is why it is so important to pay attention to the details. As I have said for years, the Chinese re-conquest of SE Asia is well underway. They already have de facto states like Myanmar and client-partners like Pakistan, but are actively pursuing a Maoist resurgence throughout the entire region. Most notable and alarming has been the Maoist insurgency in India, the world’s largest democracy. If you look at the example of Nepal, a lot can change in a decade or so. Now, in the aforementioned article, we see mention of policies like this:
Mr Bhattarai has been shrewd in other ways too, for instance, in warming up relations with India that had cooled as Nepal grew closer to China.
This is not idle chit-chat and normal trade relations. This is serious and a road towards unification. The Maoist uprising in India is very well funded and armed. From where? Well, China needs a large eastern gateway over the Himalayas beyond Tibet and Nepal seems to be it.
I hope Nepal can retain independence and not become a vehicle of repression and exported chaos in the region. It is a beautiful ,ancient kingdom with a glorious, peaceful past. May it live up to it. We will have to see.
For more details on India’s side of the revolution, read about “Rural poverty and India’s Maoist revolt.”