A Nepali Case Study: The Differences Between India and China

China and India are big. That’s their similarity. The two hugest (by far) populations in the world, racing toward development at hyperspeed not seen anywhere else on the planet. (In large part, though, that’s just because they both have a lot of catching up to do.) And it just so happens that these two goliaths share a jagged, contested border.

But in so many ways – their priorities, how the organize their people, how they strategize for the future – they’re pretty darn distinctly different countries, cultures and societies.

Just one example: the differences in the way India and China are providing development aid to the little kingdom sandwiched between the two giants, Nepal.

After our eight-hour, 120-kilometer journey winding north from Kathmandu, we arrived at Syapru Besi, as far as the road reaches towards the Nepali-Chinese border. You can see the mountains of Tibet, though, not far in the distance, marking the start of China.

The last three hours of the drive had been excrutiatingly slow, as every year the monsoon rains wash out giant cuts in the road, forcing a slow rebuild from boulders down the gravel, a rather bone-rattling work-in-progress. But as we rounded the last corner, a high arching bridge, still under construction but already a work of art, spanned the glacial melt river before leading the road into Syapru Besi. Why make the investment of a fancy new bridge at the end of a road that gets washed out every year, I wondered.

It wasn’t until I saw the sign in front of one of the small storefronts in the village that I figured it out. And the language on the trucks hauling rock. And the work crew in the truck. China. China was paying for the bridge. And the goal was more than just development aid in a less-developed neighbor. China was working on extending the road all the way into Tibet, a new, expensive, sturdier, higher capacity road closer to the river in the very near future. The bridge is just the first step of the Chinese investment, a rather practical, strategic, tangible investment at that.

While in Syapru Besi, we saw evidence of India’s investments in its northern neighbor, too, but they looked much differently. We met two 30-something gentlemen in our guesthouse dining room one evening. Both had said they had studied in India. One was the lucky recipient of one of the many scholarships that the Indian embassy hands out to Nepali students every year. A commitment to the human contact and partnership between the two countries. (Even the new Nepali prime minister, a Maoist cum parliamentarian, earned his PhD in India. To much fanfare in the Nepali and Indian press, he made his inaugural trip to Delhi as prime minister during our time in the country.) And on the road, another sign of India’s development aid. An ambulance, hard to tell if it was a hand-me-down or not, emblazed with the label of Indo-Nepali friendship.

It will be interesting to see which wins hearts and minds better, infrastructure or people power. Nepal will be one of laboratories. The other will be the trajectories of the countries themselves.