China-Nepal Exercises Don’t Worry Us: India

Hindu
The enduring ties between Kathmandu and New Delhi are not concerned with the ongoing military exercises between China and Nepal, the External Affairs Ministry said.

What the Nepalese Prime Minister’s Visit to China Says About the Wider Politics of Asia

Rishi Iyengar
Time
Caught between India and China, Nepal must pull off a delicate balancing act.

Sinica Podcast

06.01.15

Earthquake in Nepal!

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
[Note: This podcast was first recorded on May 13.—The Editors]On April 25, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake shook the Katmandu Valley in Nepal, causing over 8,600 deaths, countless more injuries, and triggering mountain avalanches which sent snow...

Environment

05.14.15

Nepal Earthquake Highlights Dangers of Dam-Building in Tibet

from chinadialogue
Although the precise picture is still unclear, it’s likely that Nepal’s huge earthquake in April 2015 wreaked major damage on more than a dozen hydroelectric projects in Nepal.This should sound a shrill warning for projects across the border in...

Conversation

04.29.15

Is China Building Up Soft Power by Aiding Nepal?

Ashok Gurung, Zha Daojiong & more
A devastating earthquake has struck one of China’s smallest neighbors, the mountainous former kingdom known, since 2008, as the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Surrounded on three sides by India—known in Nepali as a “friendly nation”—Nepal...

Nepal Rejects Taiwan Rescue Team Offer, Says Minister

Agence France-Presse
Nepal does not recognize Taiwan, considered by China as part of its territory awaiting to be reunited since their split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.

CCTV Shows Moment Aftershocks Hit Tibet after Nepal Earthquake

Guardian
The footage shows roads and buildings shaking violently in Gyirong county, which neighbours Nepal. 

At Least 20 Killed, 58 Injured in Tibet Following Earthquake

Xinhua
Some 24,800 people in Xigaze City were relocated after 8.1 earthquake in neighboring Nepal.

Nepal Earthquake: India and China Send Rescue Teams to Himalayan Nation

Niharika Mandhana and Charles Hutzler
Wall Street Journal
China sent 62 rescue workers, six sniffer dogs, and was providing about $3.2 million in supplies.

Books

04.02.15

Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy

Sulmaan Wasif Khan
In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa, leaving the People's Republic of China with a crisis on its Tibetan frontier. Sulmaan Wasif Khan tells the story of the PRC's response to that crisis and, in doing so, brings to life an extraordinary cast of characters: Chinese diplomats appalled by sky burials, Guomindang spies working with Tibetans in Nepal, traders carrying salt across the Himalayas, and Tibetan Muslims rioting in Lhasa. What Chinese policymakers confronted in Tibet, Khan argues, was not a "third world" but a "fourth world" problem: Beijing was dealing with peoples whose ways were defined by statelessness. As it sought to tighten control over the restive borderlands, Mao's China moved from a lighter hand to a harder, heavier imperial structure. That change triggered long-lasting shifts in Chinese foreign policy. Moving from capital cities to far-flung mountain villages, from top diplomats to nomads crossing disputed boundaries in search of pasture, this book shows Cold War China as it has never been seen before and reveals the deep influence of the Tibetan crisis on the political fabric of present-day China. —The University of North Carolina Press{chop}

Environment

07.11.13

Organic Farming Takes Root in Nepal

from chinadialogue
The fierce sunlight bakes the fields and the winter crop of potatoes is still under the soil. Fifty-five year old Nepalese farmer Badri Prasad Humagain sits in his front yard looking out at his small field. His village in the Kathmandu...

On the Sacred Mountain

Pico Iyer from New York Review of Books
A powerful, unexpected scene suddenly surfaces near the beginning of Colin Thubron’s characteristically beautiful, though uncharacteristically haunted, new book of travel. As he walks through the mountains of Nepal, toward the holy peak of Mount...

Reports

07.01.08

Appeasing China: Restricting the Rights of Tibetans in Nepal

Human Rights Watch
This report concerns human rights issues surrounding the suppression of Tibetan protesters in Nepal. Following a Chinese governmental crackdown in Tibet in 2008, many Tibetans in Nepal began to protest. Nepali authorities have harshly suppressed the...

Room at the Top

Pico Iyer from New York Review of Books
The last time I was in the Himalayas, I met a young, highly Westernized Tibetan who, misled perhaps by my Indian features (born in England, I’ve never lived in the subcontinent), started talking to me about the strange ways of the exotic foreigners...