Beijing has ended its 31-month-old blockade with Nepal, allowing Nepalese trucks to carry goods across the border, the Chinese Embassy announced in a statement on Wednesday.
The Chinese embassy said that six Nepalese trucks passed through the Kerung/Rasuwagadhi border port on Tuesday.
Nepalese officials told local media that the trucks carried items such as bamboo logs and copper utensils. The overall value of the items exported on Tuesday stood at over $38,000, the highest intra-day trade at the border point in almost three years.
Why Did China Restrict Good at Border With Nepal?
Beijing imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and people across its land border with Nepal as part of its ‘zero-COVID’ policy, following the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
Kathmandu repeatedly voiced concerns over the impact of the blockade on local traders, especially given that the economic and political ties between the two nations had been on the upswing since Kathmandu acceded to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2017.
Two years later, China overtook India as the largest source of foreign investment into Nepal. The same year, Kathmandu and Beijing elevated their ties to the level of ‘strategic partnership of cooperation’ during the visit of President Xi Jinping to the landlocked Himalayan country.
The Chinese foreign ministry announced on Tuesday that Beijing would relax restrictions on international arrivals starting January 8.
The lifting of Beijing’s blockade also came just a day after Nepal’s new Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, who heads the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), took charge as the nation’s leader after the elections last month threw a hung mandate.
Prachanda, with the backing of his former ally and ex-Nepalese Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, has agreed to a power-sharing arrangement which would see the current leader stepping down in 2025.
Oli heads the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist). Prachanda was part of Oli’s party till 2020 when the left party was split owing to differences between the two leaders.
An year before during Xi’s visit, the CPN (UML) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) signed a pact to boost inter-party ties.