By Anbarasan Ethirajan

BBC News

The bright orange hotel sticks out as far as the eye can see – but unfortunately for its owner Bishnu Sharma, there is hardly anyone there to see it.

His hotel offers breath-taking mountain views from the town of Lumbini in Nepal – Buddha’s birthplace.

But a hoped-for surge in tourist numbers has failed to materialise, blamed in part on tensions between Nepal’s giant neighbours India and China.

Lumbini saw close to a million visitors in 2022, according to the Lumbini Development Trust – and it was this number the government was betting on when it spent $76m (£61m) to build the Gautam Buddha International Airport, which opened in May last year.

Domestic tourists make up most of the visitors, with just less than a third travelling from neighbouring India.

The terminal, also known as Bhairahawa Airport, lets tourists fly directly to Lumbini instead of travelling 250km (155 miles) by land from the capital, Kathmandu.

Yet the anticipated travel boom never materialised, something travel industry experts attribute to a lack of early promotion and incentives to international airlines.

“The government asked us to expand tourism infrastructure saying more international flights would come. But my hotel is two-thirds empty. I am now struggling to repay my loan,” Mr Sharma tells the BBC, adding that he is millions of rupees in debt.

Travel industry experts argue tourist arrivals, particularly from overseas, will go up if there are regular scheduled international flights operating out of Bhairahawa airport.

But Nepali officials say Delhi has refused to allow big passenger planes to fly west through its airspace – meaning planes cannot fly over India to reach the Gautam Buddha airport. Access to Indian airspace would mean shorter flights at lower cost.

Some in Nepal also believe that Delhi is wary of the fact that the Gautam Buddha airport was constructed by China’s Northwest Civil Aviation Airport.

The airport is also located near Nepal’s border with India – west of where the two Asian giants’ troops clashed last December in the Arunachal Pradesh region, just seven months after the terminal opened to international traffic.

In 2020, a major encounter between India and China killed at least 20 troops. At the centre of their dispute is an ill-defined, poorly-demarcated 3,440km (2,100-mile)-long border- called the Line of Actual Control, or LAC.

The presence of rivers, lakes and snowcaps means the line can shift. The soldiers on either side – representing two of the world’s largest armies – come face to face at many points.

The situation at the border is mirrored by growing political tension, with strained ties between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Observers say talks are the only way forward because both nuclear-armed countries have much to lose. The two countries have fought only one war, in 1962, when India suffered a humiliating defeat.

The Gautum Buddha airport was meant to be the key to Nepal’s plan to grow traffic by easing the load of Kathmandu – which has been for years its only international gateway. Kathmandu Airport is heavily congested and was briefly shut down by a powerful earthquake in 2015.

A third international airport located in Pokhara – a town with stunning views of the Annapurna mountains and known for adventure sports – is facing a familiar problem to Bhairahawa.

Since it opened last January, the airport – built with a $215m loan from China – has not welcomed any international flights, save for a charter flight from Chengdu that brought in Chinese officials and tourists.

Currently, Gautama Buddha and Pokhara have a combined traffic of 80-85 domestic flights per day. But experts say the terminals need substantial international traffic to sustain operations.

“I don’t think only domestic flights will make these two airports commercially viable. It may be difficult to repay the loan without regular international flights,” says Tri Ratna Manandhar, the former director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

Pokhara International Airport chief Bikram Raj Gautam says Nepal needs “proactive diplomacy” to convince countries like India to open their airspace to commercial flights that will land in Nepal.

Experts say Nepal can also look at attracting tourists from the east like Thailand, Japan and Cambodia, while Delhi’s restrictions choke traffic from the west.

Nepal Airlines has just started a weekly flight from Bhairahawa to Kuala Lumpur – something that should send a positive message to other airlines, Dipak Bajracharya, director of the Gautam Buddha International Airport tells the BBC.

But Nepal’s minister for tourism and civil aviation, Sudan Kiranti, remains optimistic that there will be a resolution with Delhi – and soon.

“We are in constant touch and dialogue with Indian officials and diplomats,” he tells the BBC. “They are very positive.”

With additional reporting by Surendra Phuyal in Kathmandu

Tom Harper

China’s capacity to surprise western politicians was demonstrated recently, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping was unexpectedly absent from the G20 summit. There were a few reasons why this G20 might have been less important for Xi, including the rising influence of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India and China) partnership.

But often western reactions to a Chinese decision can come from a lack of understanding of Beijing’s motivations. A deeper knowledge of China would help the west interpret Beijing’s actions more clearly, helpful at a time where many analysts see China as a potential challenger to the US as the dominant world power. With this in mind, here are five things that the west often gets wrong about Chinese foreign policy.

1. It’s not a grand scheme

In the western media, Chinese foreign policy has often been seen as a grand scheme to secure world leadership. Such an image has been popular with western politicians, such as South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who claimed that China had a “2000-year plan to destroy the US”.

However, Chinese policy is not quite the labyrinthine plot that it has often been presented as. An example of this can be seen in “Wolf Warrior diplomacy”, which has often interpreted as a long-term, calculated strategy of Chinese aggression to western leaders. But another way of looking at Wolf Warrior diplomacy is as an opportunistic response to the bellicose rhetoric of the former US president Donald Trump’s administration as well as a need to cater to nationalism at home. Showing Chinese leaders “talking tough” to their foreign counterparts also plays well with a domestic audience, and can divert attention from a poorly performing economy.

Equally, grander Chinese initiatives, such as the Belt and the Road Initiative (BRI), which provides aid and finance to African and South American countries to create new infrastructure, may also have been created as a response to outside developments, particularly the US pivot towards expanding its influence in Asia, from 2010. Chinese foreign policy has largely been devised in response to recent developments rather than being a long-term scheme for domination.

2. China deals with democracies

Another common fear is that Beijing has encouraged the rise of political authoritarianism in other countries. The Chinese model of economic development has racheted up fears of China attempting to spread its political system beyond its national borders. But, some of the biggest advocates of the China model have been the political elites in developing nations, many of whom have a colonial history, and who appreciate that China offers an alternative to the west in attracting investment.

Overall though, Beijing generally takes a laissez-faire approach towards the internal politics of its partners, with China being willing to deal with democracies and dictatorships, rather than forcing its partners to fall in line with its own political system.

3. China’s role in the world order

One of the most common depictions of China in recent years has been of it as a revisionist power that seeks to overthrow the liberal rules-based world order and international bodies. Such an image was popularised by Graham Allison’s 2017 book Destined for War, which warned of a China seeking to overthrow US domination. It presents the China/US relationship as the latest in the long line of great power relationships that follow the same pattern.

However, while China wishes to amend certain areas of the post-Cold War system, most notably it being centred around the US and liberal values, it does not wish to fully overturn the whole system. For instance, China has played a significant part in established international bodies, such as the United Nations. China was also one of the primary beneficiaries of post-Cold War globalisation, with China’s rapid development being achieved partially through this economic model.

4. China’s historical experience

One of the greatest challenges posed by Chinese foreign policy is that it questions many of the dominant understandings of international relations, which have been grounded in the experiences of the west.

But China draws on a different history, one that includes its own dominant position internationally, but also its defeat and occupation. Beijing references this past when talking of the “Century of Humiliation” (1839-1949), a period when China was dominated and occupied by colonial powers. This powerful image can rally the domestic population as well as building a common cause with developing nations, many of which are former colonies themselves.

China’s golden ages of the Han, Tang and Song dynasties (202BC-1279) has also influenced Chinese thinking. This was a time of huge cultural and economic influence, with Asia trade centred around the Silk Road. The Silk Road refers to an historical network of highly lucrative trade routes linking a powerful China to the rest of the world, and used to sell its products for centuries. Its ambitions to build a new version of this can be seen in the BRI, which gives China a “new Silk Road”. It is by understanding the logic behind these legacies that one can see Chinese foreign policy more clearly.

5. The appeal of Chinese aid

China’s financial aid and investment projects in developing countries are sometimes portrayed as simply bribing corrupt states or ensnaring them with “debt trap diplomacy”.

While these images have been popular in western media coverage of Chinese foreign policy, they overlook the role of the country receiving aid to choose to accept Chinese finance and how this also appeals as an alternative to western aid packages which traditionally come with many conditions relating to governance.

Chinese military leader and strategist Sun Tzu once emphasised the importance of knowing one’s enemies as well as oneself; these words are especially pertinent in understanding China today.

(Source: The Conversation)

William Yang

Efforts to resume diplomatic engagement between South Korea, Japan and China, including announcement of a possible visit to Seoul by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and an agreement to resume a trilateral leaders’ summit, reflect China’s attempt to counter Washington’s curbs on the export of advanced technologies, analysts told VOA last week.

It also shows Seoul and Tokyo’s desires to restart conversation over contentious issues with Beijing, they said.

“The real catalyst for the restart of talks [among the three countries] at the vice minister-level last week comes from the Chinese side,” Daniel Russel, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Obama administration, told VOA by phone.

He says that in his view, China’s efforts to reduce tension with South Korea and Japan are driven by Beijing’s concerns over warming ties between Seoul and Tokyo, the two countries’ strengthened trilateral relationship with the U.S., and the economic slowdown that China has experienced since the start of the year.

“One of the trends that the Chinese see and are alarmed by is the closer alignment of Japan and South Korea with the U.S. and Europeans in reducing China’s access to cutting-edge technologies,” Russel said. “The Chinese want to do whatever they can to discourage South Korea from following the U.S. in putting any additional curbs on semiconductor exports to China.”

However, other observers say the motivation to restart diplomatic engagement comes from South Korea.

“The South Koreans are motivated by the fact that China is a big neighbor and it’s a huge market for them,” Dennis Wilder, a former China analyst with the CIA, told VOA by phone.

He said he believes that the agreement to resume the trilateral leaders’ summit is a natural next step for Seoul and Tokyo after they improved bilateral relations and significantly advanced their partnership with the U.S.

“What South Korea and Japan want to do is to stabilize their relationship with Beijing and keep economic ties with China strong without having to concede anything on the strategic side,” Wilder said.

During his meeting with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo in the Chinese city of Hangzhou Sept. 23, Xi said he would seriously consider visiting South Korea, which would be his first visit to Seoul since 2014 if it happens.

Bloomberg News has since reported that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office is working to arrange a visit.

Despite his commitment to enhance cooperation with the U.S. over the last year, some experts think Yoon is “much less of a China hawk than is widely perceived.”

“Yoon has always been willing to talk with China, provided that it could be done with an appropriate level of respect and without preconditions,” Joel Atkinson, an expert in East Asian affairs at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in South Korea, told VOA in a written response to questions.

He added that the more Xi Jinping is willing to compromise, such as being willing to visit Seoul before Yoon visits Beijing, the easier it will be for Yoon to participate in the trilateral leaders’ summit.

Exchange views on key issues

Apart from Xi’s potential Seoul visit, South Korea, Japan and China agreed to organize a summit for leaders from the three countries “as early as possible,” after deputy foreign ministers from the three countries met in Seoul on Tuesday.

During a daily press briefing on the same day, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said senior officials from the three countries held “in-depth discussions” on steadily resuming trilateral cooperation.

“The three parties agreed to hold a foreign ministers’ meeting in the coming months and maintain communication on holding a leaders’ meeting at the earliest opportunity convenient to all three countries,” he said.

Wilder said he believes that Seoul and Tokyo will want to learn about Beijing’s assessment of the North Korean government and its policies, including missile tests and nuclear advancement.

“They would also want to hear what the Chinese understand about the recent rapprochement between North Korea and Russia,” he told VOA.

In addition to sensitive geopolitical issues, the three countries will talk about economic ties, particularly the impact of Washington’s curbs on advanced semiconductor technologies.

“I imagine the Chinese would be eager to get assurances that South Korea and Japan aren’t going too far with those restrictions,” Wilder said.

As for Seoul and Tokyo, Wilder said he expects they would hope to get reassurance from Beijing about access to the Chinese markets for their businesses and the guarantee that business people from both countries would be treated fairly in China.

They would want Beijing to guarantee “that there won’t be arbitrary detentions as we have seen in recent months,” he said.

A move to unblock lines of communication

Because of the growing military threat from North Korea and China’s frequent military maneuvers around Taiwan, leaders from South Korea, Japan, and the United States strengthened the trilateral security partnership during a summit at Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat, in August.

Beijing lodged complaints against the statement from the Camp David Summit, which criticized China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea. In April, Yoon’s claims that tensions near Taiwan were caused by attempts to change the status quo by force caused a diplomatic spat between Seoul and Beijing.

With tensions high between Beijing and the two major American allies in northeast Asia, Russel, who is now the vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said attempts by South Korea, Japan, and China to resume exchanges between leaders can prevent existing problems from being exacerbated.

“We are in a much more problematic, if not dangerous, circumstance in part because there has been virtually no real engagement,” he told VOA. “The trilateral summit could unblock lines of communication between Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo, as well as potentially chipping away some of the persistent problems.”

Despite attempts to resume diplomatic exchanges with Beijing, Russel said he thinks these efforts will not compromise the security partnership among Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington.

“I’m sure the Japanese and Korean leaders will offer some reassurance to China that their alliance with the U.S. and the trilateral coordination among them is not a hostile act intended to contain, suppress, and subvert China,” he told VOA.

(Source: VOA)

Justin McCurry in Tokyo, and agencies

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea will hold three-way talks “as soon as possible” after a meeting intended to ease Chinese concerns over Washington’s stronger security presence in the region.

Official said on Tuesday that the three countries’ deputy foreign ministers had agreed to revive trilateral talks after a four-year hiatus during which tensions have risen over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and Chinese military activity.

Lim Soo-suk, a spokesperson for South Korea’s foreign ministry, said the leaders’ summit would be held at the “earliest mutually convenient time”, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Japan’s foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, said the three countries shared the need to restart high-level talks, including summits, “as soon as possible”.

“I believe it is very valuable to discuss the various challenges the region faces,” she told a briefing in Tokyo.

China has expressed alarm over deepening ties between Washington and its two allies in north-east Asia, which are home to tens of thousands of US troops.

In August, South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and the US president, Joe Biden, hailed a “new chapter” in three-way security cooperation after a historical summit at Camp David.

China denounced the summit, saying it “opposes relevant countries forming various cliques and their practices of exacerbating confrontation and jeopardising other countries’ strategic security”. It was particularly angered by a reference in the Camp David statement to China’s “aggressive behaviour” in the South China Sea.

Washington has attempted to present a united regional front against Chinese military activity near Taiwan and North Korea’s development of powerful weapons of mass destruction.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said on Tuesday that Beijing would oppose the “wanton expansion of military alliances and the squeezing of the security space of other countries”, in what appeared to be a warning against any attempt to establish a Nato-like military alliance in the Asia-Pacific.

Forces from Japan, South Korea and the US have held joint military exercises in response to the threat from North Korea, while China – North Korea’s biggest aid donor and trading partner – has recently sent senior officials to attend military parades in Pyongyang.

Japan and South Korea have an interest in maintaining a stable security relationship with China, including its help addressing North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, according to Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“These shared interests open up new avenues for strategic communication, confidence-building, and measures to prevent crises,” Zhao said.

The prospects for a revival of formal talks between the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea have risen following a recent thaw in ties between Tokyo and Seoul.

Yoon and his fellow conservative Kishida appear to have settled long-running rows over how much responsibility Japan should bear for its actions on the Korean peninsula before and during the second world war, including its use of “comfort women” and forced labour.

South Korea’s foreign ministry said cooperation between the three neighbours was essential to the “peace, stability, and prosperity of the world”, adding that together they accounted for 20% of the world’s population and a quarter of the world’s GDP.

In similarly conciliatory tones, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China, Japan and South Korea had a common interest in improving bilateral ties.

“We should work together to strengthen practical cooperation … and make new contributions to regional peace, stability, and prosperity,” Wang said on Tuesday.

(Source: The Guardian)