China has successfully saddled Nepal with an uneconomical airport as part of the Belt and Road infrastructure program. While Nepal will need to cover the loan as the airport fails to pay for itself, the Chinese effectively paid themselves to build it, with little transparency about the selection of subcontractors, or the standards the construction would follow.
Misguided Nepal says (translated by YouTube captions): “The government and authorities know well that they won’t be able to earn enough from this airport to repay China’s loan.”
The New York Times reports on the inflated price:
The Chinese loan agreement allowed only Chinese firms to bid on the work. CAMC’s winning bid of $305 million, almost twice what Nepal had estimated the airport would cost, raised the ire of some Nepali politicians, who called the price outrageous and the bidding process rigged. CAMC then lowered the price about 30 percent, to $216 million.
Wakabayashi, Sharma, and Fu. “China Got a Big Contract. Nepal Got Debt and a Pricey Airport.” New York Times. Oct 16, 2023.
The Chinese contractors were able to hire their own subsidiary for project oversight and had no governmental regulatory oversight to check work quality, including whether materials used would be durable in the local environment.
Who is the airport really mean to serve? We may have been given a hint. According to the NYT article, the top contractor “said in an interview that Pokhara would have “the first modern airport in Nepal” that adhered to the “Chinese standard.” From this we might infer that the airport is just another asset for the Chinese Communists. In his book, The Final Struggle, Ian Easton postulated that the commercial assets, as air and seaports that China is building, are effectively military resources because while they are ostensibly for commercial use, they are designed to be compatible with China’s military requirements.
Further study: The Centre for Social Inclusion and Federalism has several reports on Nepal’s relationship with China. https://cesifnepal.org/
