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Nepal's China pivot washes away
This article is authored by Brabim Karki, columnist and commentator, Nepal.
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For three weeks last month, Nepal was reduced to one functioning land route to China. It was not the historic Araniko Highway, nor was it the newly-minted Rasuwagadhi crossing, the corridor Kathmandu had spent a decade promoting as its ultimate escape from Indian economic hegemony. Both were collapsed, one swept away by floodwaters and the other shuttered under the imminent threat of landslides. What remained was Korala, a pass so high and remote that traders openly describe it not as an alternative, but as a desperate last resort. Nearly 1,400 people died and thousands are still missing in a catastrophic torrent of mud and rocks that destroyed the Nepal-China border on August 26, that caused this ruin. The devastating flash floods swept away roads, bridges and the entire villages in Nepal. The customs office at Rasuwagadhi, along with hundreds of freight vehicles queued behind it, simply vanished.
The disaster has settled a geopolitical question that Nepali policymakers have long preferred to leave open: Whether the landlocked nation can ever truly diversify its economic dependence away from India and toward China. The floods did not create Nepal’s vulnerability; they exposed the fragility of the illusion that it could be easily undone.
Nepal’s trade routes to China all traverse some of the most volatile terrain on Earth--glacial valleys prone to sudden outbursts, slopes that liquefy under monsoon rainfall, and roads carved into sheer gorges that a single ice avalanche can sweep away easily. Rasuwagadhi itself ascended as Nepal’s primary northern gateway because the catastrophic 2015 earthquake wrecked the Tatopani route before it. The problem has persisted for decades and this year isn’t different. The flash floods have led to an estimated $ 4.7 billion in recovery and reconstruction needs, and while Chinese engineers have offered verbal assurances to assist, a written agreement hasn't been signed yet. However, even if the road is restored to its previous standard, it will remain in the same perilous valley, exposed to the same systemic risks, waiting for the next climate shock or seismic shift.
India is Nepal's largest trading partner, accounting for about 62.3% of Nepal's total external trade, according to the data. This is an asymmetrical relationship that Kathmandu has spent years trying to rhetorically minimise. During this latest crisis, the open southern border with India proved to be the country's literal lifeline. The flat terrain, established highway networks, and absence of months-long customs backlogs kept goods moving. Economic diversification sounds like prudent statecraft in a policy paper but it has proven far harder to locate on a map.
To be fair, the instinct to look north was a result of genuine historical trauma. Overdependence on a single trading partner carries devastating costs in pricing power, political leverage, and the vulnerability that was exposed during the border blockade in 2015-16. The Nepal government said India imposed a blockade as retaliation for its adoption of a constitution that had drawn Indian objections. India said the disruption in supply was due to the mass protests in the Himalayan nation. That bitter episode is exactly why Kathmandu looked to Beijing. But a reactive impulse is not a strategy. Engineering a geopolitical counterweight by routing critical trade through one of the most fragile mountain ranges was always a high-stakes gamble that the Himalayas would cooperate. They have declined to do so.
This doesn't imply that Nepal should abandon its northern ambitions or reject Chinese investment. Rather, it means those ambitions must be tailored to what the landscape can bear. Future rail links, if ever realised, will help. Redundant border crossings, should Beijing choose to finance them, will offer a buffer. But building redundancy to mitigate vulnerability is not the same as replacing a primary trading partner.
The floodwaters that erased Rasuwagadhi have receded. The customs outpost will be rebuilt, and trade will resume at whatever pace the mountain allows. What cannot be rebuilt so easily is the assumption behind a decade of Nepali foreign policy that the north could ever counterbalance the south. It never did. The rivers only made that plain.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Brabim Karki, columnist and commentator, Nepal.
