Pro- India forces behind China- Nepal dispute rumors
The China- Bhutan border dispute rumors followed false allegations of China trespassing Nepalese land. The rumor started in October and was widely hyped up by Western and Indian media. Media reports claiming that China has annexed more than 150 hectares of Nepalese land have been proven false by repeated investigations from China, Nepal and both countries’ foreign ministries.
The allegation cited the conclusion of a politically motivated team that accused China of encroaching on Nepal’s territory in the border district after their 11- day visit to Nepal- China border in Humla district in October.
The team was led by Nepali Congress ( NC) Parliamentary leader Jeevan Bahadur Shahi, a former government minister widely regarded by the local public as a “blind supporter” of US policy. His party Nepali Congress supported the team’s findings in the media and is the largest opposition party in the Nepali House of Representatives and the National Assembly, and is also considered a pro- India force.
Jeevan Bahadur Shahi on Sunday said he felt threatened after China responded aggressively to a report by his team, which showed the “communist nation had encroached on Nepal’s land in Humla.”
“I want to reiterate that China will be responsible if anything unfortunate happens to me,” Shahi said in an interview on local news platform Khabarhub.
“Shahi is the one to provoke the Nepal- China border issues. Government has made clear many times that there is no border encroachment from China. Shahi is just greeting some media hype because here are also some forces that don’t want Nepal- China relations good,” an anonymous Nepali journalist who closely follows the matter told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Jeevan Bahadur Shahi has registered and run a social organization named Snow- land Integrated Development Center, financially supported by the US. Shahi has been developing another similar organization which mobilizes against China on behalf of the US and Indian governments, a Nepali political observer told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Insiders have confirmed that some staffers in the Indian embassy are supporting some young members of the Nepal Samajbadi Party ( Nepal Socialist Party), a unified party of several groups known to be pro- India, to organize street demonstrations near the Chinese embassy, a source close to the matter told the Global Times on Tuesday on condition of anonymity. Such activities have increased since the India- China face- off. One can assume, accordingly, the Indian embassy officials might have used NC leaders to speak out against China, said the source.
Some initiators of demonstrations have close ties with the 14th Dalai Lama and his “governmentin- exile,” and often organize some parliament members’ visits to the Dalai Lama in India. Some have become more explicit in Kathmandu to accuse China after China- India border conflict escalated, said the source.
Nepali Ambassador to China Mahendra Bahadur Pandey told the Global Times in a previous interview that there used to be some long, outstanding territorial problems between Nepal and India. He said some Indian media reports are not based on facts and adopt a biased attitude. Pandey said cooperation between China and Nepal is natural and friendly.
The border disputes have long existed, but tensions have grown louder in 2020 because India’s disputes with China and Pakistan on border have upgraded, Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
The Indian media take the chance to hype “Chinese expansionism,” Qian said. “They want to create an image in world public opinion that India has been bullied by China, so that the US and other countries would support their policies against China.”
The border issue is a card for India to play to acquire domestic support. To hype China- Nepal and China- Bhutan issues, India invents pretexts for the border standoff between India and China by hyping falsified border disputes, Qian noted.
In Nepal and Bhutan, mainstream discourse advocates friendly relations with China, but India would rather keep its influence and pressure on other South Asian countries, according to Qian.