Maoists go on pilgrimage in China
By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Nepal's top Maoist leader, Prachanda, included a visit to the town
of Shaoshan in Hunan province while on a trip to China this week. This stopover
at Mao Zedong's birthplace matches the one he made last year, as prime
minister, in Germany - while en route to the United Nations headquarters in New
York - to Trier, where Karl Marx was born.
Prachanda's desire to visit places where some of the world's greatest
ideologues have surfaced derives from a deep-seated interest in original
communist concepts, and in comparing them with present-day realities.
The party Prachanda currently heads, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has
purist members who believe that in China communism was diluted by later-day
leaders in their bid to take
their country to modernity. Some of them also do not see any plausible reason
to discredit the tumultuous 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution, and there are
some others who criticize paramount leader Deng Xiaoping for deviating from the
original path for the sake of the economic prosperity of a few.
Accompanying Prachanda was his mentor and senior colleague, Mohan Baidya
"Kiran", for possible political discourse at the ideological level. Party
spokesman and another prominent leader, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, conceded that
the high-level delegation would seek to utilize the opportunity to understand
first-hand the events, trends and achievements of China since it was born as
the People's Republic of China in October 1949.
"There is a lot be learnt from the experiences of our northern neighbor,"
Prachanda told Asia Times Online on the eve of his tour. He is chairman of the
party which won the largest number of seats - not an absolute majority though -
in the National Assembly elections held in April 2008.
The assembly is now drawing up a new constitution to replace the interim one
that aims at institutionalizing Nepal as a republic with a federal set-up.
Maoist members in the assembly have been insisting that the country have an
executive presidency and a multiparty system in which the main party leads the
other parties and that there is no official opposition bench, like in countries
with a Westminster system.
This means the Chinese model, but Maoist leaders are hesitant to publicly
express their preferences. Nepal, since liberation from autocratic rule in
1951, has practiced only the model adopted in countries with a parliamentary
democracy.
Prachanda has said phases in China span from insurgency and revolution to a
great leap forward to prosperity - subjects in which his comrades-in-arms would
be interested. "We are obviously willing to know greater details of the Chinese
experience of [the past] 60 years," Prachanda elaborated.
Prachanda seems greatly fascinated by the observation of Chris Patten, the last
British governor of Hong Kong at the time of its handover to China in 1997, in
an article issued to coincide with China's October 1 anniversary celebrations,
"Mao made China proud. Deng made it prosperous."
Prachanda's positive remarks about China were promptly reciprocated by a senior
Chinese leader. China's top political advisor, Jia Qinglin, assured Prachanda
that his visit would have a "positive and far-reaching impact on relations
between the two countries as well as relations between the two parties".
Analysts see these initial gestures as an indicator of Beijing's eagerness to
develop party-to-party ties. "It is indeed already assuming palpable
significance," said Rajeshwar Acharya, Nepal's ambassador to China from 1998 to
2002. After the monarchy, the Chinese appear to be looking for a dependable
ally in Nepal, and the Maoists seem to be willing to take on this role. Chinese
policy needs to be analyzed also in the context of Beijing's transparent desire
to expand its contacts and linkages across the South Asian region.
This new scenario is emerging after a few ups and downs since Prachanda became
prime minister in August 2008. He had then broken an unwritten tradition of
Nepal's prime minister visiting India first, by flying to Beijing where Chinese
leaders were taking part in the closing ceremony for the Beijing Summer Olympic
Games. They expressed delight at Nepal's new prime minister visiting China
within a week of his assumption of high office.
But the enthusiasm swiftly vanished once Prachanda told the media in Kathmandu
that his "first political visit" would, after all, be to India. Several of
Nepal's political pundits criticized Prachanda for being unnecessarily
apologetic. "He lost goodwill from both sides - north and south," said former
ambassador Acharya.
A chance to mend fences came in May. But Prachanda suddenly got entangled in a
row over the sacking of the then-army chief, resulting in the cancelation of
the visit to China at the 11th hour. One conspiracy theory making the rounds
says New Delhi wanted to prevent Prachanda from signing a new peace and
friendship treaty with China, the draft of which was earlier handed over to
Nepal's prime minister by a visiting Chinese official in Kathmandu. "This
remains a mystery," Prachanda told this correspondent without elaborating.
The entanglement led to Prachanda's resignation from the premiership, on May 4.
The televised address he made to announce his resignation contained this
acrimonious statement, "We are not ready to bow our head in front of foreign
masters by ignoring the blood of tens of thousands of patriotic individuals."
Though he did not identify any country, the reference to India was obvious.
Prachanda happened to be in Beijing at the time the Chinese Foreign Ministry
expressed "strong dissatisfaction" over Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's
tour of the disputed Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. New Delhi promptly
issued a reaction rejecting the Chinese contentions.
Another area of Chinese concern has traditionally been Tibetan refugees in
Nepal, who carry out a "Free Tibet" campaign and have street protests from time
to time. While Nepal holds to the "One China" policy, as do many other
countries, including the United States, its porous border with India has been a
source of trouble for some time.
Yet the Chinese know that such protests were effectively curbed during
Prachanda's tenure as prime minister. In the meantime, news has come from
Washington that President Barack Obama has declined to meet the exiled Tibetan
spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in view of Obama's scheduled visit to China
next month. This American approach inevitably helps Nepali authorities to be
more firm in their dealings with potential trouble-makers.
Contemporary Indian media reports reflect growing concern in New Delhi about a
purported increase in Chinese influence in Nepal. Chinese diplomats, however,
do not agree with this perception.
In a recent interview given to this correspondent, the Chinese ambassador, Qui
Guohong, described such a statement as "groundless and baseless".
"Our friendly relations with Nepal are not targeted against any other country,"
he added, saying that China wanted stable relations with Nepal.
It is a widely-held view that unlike India, China does not meddle in Nepal's
internal political process. And if one were to measure this aspect on a
percentage point basis, according to Mahara, the Maoist party's international
affairs unit chief, 90% of the blame would have to go to India and the
remainder to China.
After all, how different are Nepali Maoists from Indian Maoists, also called
Naxals, against whom New Delhi is determined to unleash its security forces
with a view to wiping out terrorism? In responding to this question, Prachanda
made it clear that workers of his party were distinctly different from Indian
Maoists, despite a broad ideological approach.
"We are already a legitimate political force in Nepal - through a series of
peace accords and an ongoing peace process witnessed by the UN," he said.
Attempts to isolate us, he said, could be counter-productive, leading to a
rapid spread of a violent movement all over South Asia.
Will renewed goodwill from China work to expand Prachanda's popular base in
Nepal and make him capable of ousting the incumbent prime minister, who stands
accused of effectively heading a puppet regime? Kathmandu's chattering classes
believe it will.
Dhruba Adhikary is a Kathmandu-based journalist.
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