CHINA AND NEPAL GIVE MOUNT EVEREST A BOOST

On Tuesday, Mount Everest grew by more than 2 feet.

So agreed China and Nepal, two countries that share a treacherously mountainous border and increasingly warm relations. They announced that they had determined the exact height of the world’s tallest mountain, a subject to which the Nepalese government has attached increasing symbolic importance over the years.

Officially, according to Kathmandu and Beijing, Mount Everest stands at 8,848.86 meters, or 29,031.7 feet. For 65 years, the consensus height had been 8,848 meters, or 29,028.87 feet.

As Mount Everest has grown, said Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, Nepal’s foreign affairs minister, in a joint virtual briefing with his Chinese counterpart, so have ties between the world’s secondlargest economy and its 101st.

The China-Nepal relationship “will rise across the Himalayas, and it will reach a new height,” Gyawali said.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, endorsed the new measure. The announcement fulfilled a promise Xi made a year ago during a visit to the Nepali capital, where he announced with his Nepali counterpart, Bidya Devi Bhandari, that the countries would jointly measure the mountain.

China’s relations with its other Himalayan neighbors have not been as warm. Tensions with India soared in June when unarmed troops from both countries brawled in perilously craggy territory that they both claim, killing 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number on the Chinese side, though the two sides have pledged to ease tensions.