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NepalRelations with China
The keystone of Nepal's China policy was maintaining
equal
friendships with China and India while simultaneously
seeking to
decrease India's influence in Nepal and Nepal's dependence
on
India. Further, Kathmandu felt that the competition
between its two
giant neighbors--China and India--would benefit its own
economic
development.
The first recorded official relations with China and
Tibet
occurred near the middle of the seventh century. By the
eighteenth
century, Nepalese adventurism in Tibet led to Chinese
intervention
in favor of Tibet. The resultant Sino-Nepalese Treaty of
1792
provided for tribute-bearing missions from Nepal to China
every
five years as a symbol of Chinese political and cultural
supremacy
in the region
(see The Making of Modern Nepal
, ch. 1).
In the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16, China refused
Nepal's
requests for military assistance and, by default,
surrendered its
dominant position in Nepal to the growing British
influence.
However, it appeared to be expedient for Nepal to retain
the
fiction of a tributary relationship with China in order to
balance
China against Britain.
Nepal invaded Tibet in 1854. Hostilities were quickly
terminated when China intervened, and the Treaty of
Thapathali was
concluded in March 1856. The treaty recognized the special
status
of China, and Nepal agreed to assist Tibet in the event of
foreign
aggression.
Relations between Nepal and China and Tibet continued
without
critical incident until 1904, when British India sent an
armed
expedition to Tibet and Nepal rejected Tibet's request for
aid to
avoid risking its good relations with Britain. Beginning
in 1908,
Nepal stopped paying tribute to China.
By 1910, apprehensive of British activity in Tibet,
China had
reasserted its claim to sovereign rights in Tibet and
feudatory
missions from Nepal. In 1912 Nepal warned the Chinese
representative at Lhasa that Nepal would help Tibet attain
independent status as long as it was consistent with
British
interests. Nepal broke relations with China when the
Tibetans,
taking advantage of the Chinese revolution of 1911, drove
the
Chinese out.
When the Chinese communists invaded Tibet in 1950,
Nepal's
relations with China began to undergo drastic changes.
Although
annual Tibetan tribute missions appeared regularly in
Nepal as late
as 1953, Beijing had started to ignore the provisions of
the 1856
treaty by curtailing the privileges and rights it accorded
to
Nepalese traders, by imposing restrictions on Nepalese
pilgrims,
and by stopping the Tibetan tributary missions.
The break between Kathmandu and Beijing continued until
1955,
when relations were reestablished with China. The two
countries
established resident ambassadors in their respective
capitals in
July 1960.
In 1956 the Treaty of Thapathali was replaced by a new
treaty
under which Nepal recognized China's sovereignty over
Tibet and
agreed to surrender all privileges and rights granted by
the old
treaty. In 1962 Nepal withdrew its ambassador from Tibet
and
substituted a consul general. An agreement on locating and
demarcating the Nepal-Tibet boundary was signed in March
1960.
Within a month, another Treaty of Peace and Friendship was
signed
in Kathmandu.
The Sino-Nepal Boundary Treaty was signed in Beijing in
October
1961. The treaty provided for a Sino-Nepal Joint
Commission to
agree on questions regarding alignment, location, and
maintenance
of the seventy-nine demarcation markers. The commission's
findings
were attached to the original treaty in a protocol signed
in
January 1963.
During the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962, Nepal
reasserted its
neutrality and warned that it would not submit to
aggression from
any state. Although the warning was directed at China,
Nepal
continued to support China's application for membership in
the
United Nations. A potential source of irritation in
Sino-Nepalese
relations was relieved in January 1964 when China agreed
to release
the frozen funds of Nepalese traders from Tibetan banks.
An agreement to construct an all-weather highway
linking
Kathmandu with Tibet was signed in October 1961--a time
when
neither Kathmandu nor Beijing had cordial relations with
New Delhi.
The Kathmandu-Kodari road opened in May 1967 but did not
yield any
commercial or trade benefits for Nepal. Because of the
severe
restrictions imposed by Beijing even before the road was
opened,
Kathmandu had closed its trade agencies in Tibet by
January 1966.
Although the highway had no economic or commercial value
and was
not viable as an alternate transit route, it was of
strategic
military importance to China. The highway established
direct links
between two major Chinese army bases within 100 kilometers
of
Kathmandu to forward bases at Gyirong in Tibet.
Throughout the latter half of the 1960s, Nepal's
relations with
China remained fairly steady. One exception was the
belligerent
activities of the Chinese officials in Nepal who eulogized
and
extolled the successes of the Cultural Revolution
(1966-76) during
the summer of 1967.
The emergence of a strident and confident India in the
early
1970s introduced some new dimensions in Nepal's China
policy. King
Birendra did not abandon the policy of equal friendship
between
China and India but wanted to woo China to counter India's
growing
influence in the region. China had implicitly recognized
India's
predominance in the region, however, and was willing to
oblige
Nepal only to the extent of pledging support in
safeguarding its
national independence and preventing foreign interference.
In an open challenge to India's primacy in Nepal, Nepal
negotiated a deal for the purchase of Chinese weapons in
mid-1988.
According to India, this deal contravened an earlier
agreement that
obliged Nepal to secure all defense supplies from India.
Nepal's overtures to China also had economic
implications. Ever
since an economic aid agreement between China and Nepal
had been
concluded in 1956, China's steadily increasing economic
and
technical assistance was being used to build up Nepal's
industrial
infrastructure and implement economic planning. According
to a 1990
report, an estimated 750 Chinese workers were in Nepal,
most of
them working on road-building crews and small-scale
development
projects. The foreign trade balance also was in Nepal's
favor.
China reportedly has ceded some territory to Nepal to
facilitate
boundary demarcation and has endorsed Nepal as a zone of
peace.
Data as of September 1991
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