Nepal and the Belt and Road Initiative: Assessing Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

In just the same manner as it is contested, debated, and controversial globally, the BRI offers the contrasting duality of prospects and challenges to Nepal. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the development initiative and framework that was formulated and initiated by President Xi Jinping of China in 2013. This, in the later years, became a vital component of Chinese foreign policy and development strategy. It focuses on creating multiple opportunities and benefits to China and the countries connected to it in the areas of infrastructure, trade, policy, finance, and people-to-people cooperation. The opportunity for Nepal is to take advantage of being a bridge between two neighbors and can be a hub for the movement of people and goods. These advantages, however, do not come without the perils of the obvious downsides, such as the risk of social disturbances stemming from different religious, cultural, and ideological values, legal and political, much of which can be attributed to the domestic and international, and pose challenges. Limited exploration and insufficient investigation of opportunities and challenges in implementing the BRI undermines the gravity of its bearings on Nepal’s sociopolitical as well as economic spheres. The objective is to identify potential opportunities and challenges associated with the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Nepal, as well as to propose mitigation strategies and remedial measures to address those challenges. This paper will explore the impacts of implementing BRI in Nepal against the backdrop of economic necessity and the significance of regional and global actor’s concerns. The nature of the problem restricts the methodology to descriptive and analytical methods. Existing literature on the subject will be analyzed for explanatory and descriptive insights, aiming to discern prevailing trends across various variables in the security, economic, and political dimensions.