Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Political Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo Full Length Article “Silk Road here we come”: Infrastructural myths, post-disaster politics, and the shifting urban geographies of Nepal Elia Apostolopoulou a, b, c, *, Hitesh Pant d a Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, University of Cambridge, UK b Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Spain c Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability, Barcelona, Spain d Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, UK A B S T R A C T In this paper, we explain how China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) drives urban transformation in Nepal reconfiguring geopolitical and geoeconomic relations and remaking the sociopolitical, cultural and material fabric of hitherto peripheral spaces. Given that BRI infrastructures materialize in parallel with Chinese-funded reconstruction projects, we pay attention to the role of post-disaster politics to unravel how ongoing urban transformation does not only affect the present and the future but also people’s histories and post-disaster memories by treating places of (re)building as empty of previous life and history. By drawing on 16 months of fieldwork, we show that despite the evident role of the BRI as an agent of urban transformation, the materialization of most BRI projects depends on geopolitical rivalries, negotiations, unstable local coalitions and escalating social contestation. We conclude that in the post-disaster era, BRI projects have become new vehicles towards Naya [new] Nepal, along with many other infrastructural myths that preceded the country’s modern history. Nonetheless, the Naya urban Nepal that is emerging from the ruins of the past is contested and uncertain, a far cry from the days of the Panchayat regime and the civil war, when such gargantuan projects were rarely challenged by Nepali people. This is the unique trajectory of Silk Road urbanization in Nepal: an ultimate path to reach a long due rural-to-urban transition that is inextricably linked with decades of infrastructural violence and precarity and strongly shaped by people’s struggles against the unequal geographies of BRI- driven urban transformation. 1. Introduction environment in impressively varying contexts across the South and North. Nonetheless, despite a few exceptions (Apostolopoulou, 2021a, The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced in 2013 by the Chi­ 2021b; Schindler & Kanai, 2021; Smith, 2022; Wiig & Silver, 2019; nese President Xi Jinping, is the single largest infrastructure project Williams et al., 2020; Zheng et al., 2021), geographical perspectives since the Marshall Plan, with a scope and scale that has no precedent in focusing explicitly on the urban aspect of the BRI are rare, which pre­ modern history (Ferdinand, 2016). The initiative is an exemplar of a new vents an in-depth understanding of its scope and impact. global paradigm of infrastructure-led development (Danyluk, 2018; In this paper, by drawing on the case of Nepal, our goal is twofold. Schindler & Kanai, 2021; Tooze, 2018) characterised by the establish­ Firstly, we aim to further contribute (Apostolopoulou 2021a, 2021b) at ment of tradescapes and mega-corridors across the globe (Hildyard & addressing the above gap by focusing on the complex ways in which Sol, 2017). As the BRI’s vision document (Chinese Government, 2015) BRI-driven urban transformation is reconfiguring geopolitical and geo­ and the location of key investments indicate, and as empirical evidence economic relations remaking the sociopolitical, cultural and material showing an intensification of urbanization alongside its infrastructural fabric of hitherto peripheral spaces. Nepal has participated in the BRI and trade corridors confirms (Derudder et al., 2018; Linlin et al., 2017), since May 12, 2017, when its foreign secretary and the former Chinese the initiative’s potential to alter urban geographies is immense. From ambassador to Nepal signed1 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) railways, airports, ports, industrial parks, optical fiber networks, and in Kathmandu. Since then, various projects including road and train special economic zones (SEZs), to smart cities, greenfield investments, infrastructures, hydropower, smart cities, and industrial parks have real estate and urban regeneration projects, the BRI brings about novel been planned and are currently at different implementation stages. combinations of large-scale infrastructure with industrial projects Some of these were agreed upon long before the BRI, with an indicative (Blanchard & Flint, 2017) and major investments on the urban built example being the Arniko Highway (Thapa et al., 2008), or were funded * Corresponding author. Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, University of Cambridge, UK. E-mail addresses: ea367@cam.ac.uk (E. Apostolopoulou), hp417@cam.ac.uk (H. Pant). 1 https://kathmandupost.com/national/2017/05/12/nepal-china-sign-framework-deal-on-obor. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102704 Received 15 June 2021; Received in revised form 22 June 2022; Accepted 22 June 2022 Available online 2 July 2022 0962-6298/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 by China but are not yet officially part of the BRI, while others are 2. Silk Road urbanization, post-disaster politics and the flagship BRI projects. geographies of memory and place What links these projects is the quest for economic and trade con­ nectivity between the two neighbours, a relationship that has particu­ In what follows, we draw on the concepts of Silk Road urbanization larly intensified since the 2015 earthquake that devastated Nepal, killing (Apostolopoulou, 2021a) and Silk Road Urbanism (Wiig & Silver, 2019) more than 8000 people and displacing 2.8 million (IOM, 2016). While to understand the distinct and diverse ways the New Silk Road is driving the earthquake highlighted the inadequacy of Nepal’s disaster response urban transformation in places where BRI projects materialize. Whereas and its immediate reliance on emergency development aid, what is Silk Road urbanization primarily highlights how the BRI intersects with significant to our analysis is the Chinese state’s increasingly overt in­ patterns of growth and the restructuring of urban-regional space, Silk terventions in infrastructure building across the Himalayan state, both Road urbanism emphasizes the ways it transforms urban life and the physical and ideological. Within this context, the BRI becomes a key urban experience more broadly (Apostolopoulou et al., 2022). To un­ vessel for the Chinese state to consolidate social and economic influence derstand the wider context within which the Silk Road emerged and its in Nepal’s foreign and domestic relations. role in shaping the global geographies of the urban, we link its emer­ Connectivity is considered key for China’s inspirations to expand its gence to the rise of infrastructure-led development at the aftermath of influence in South Asia by taking advantage of Nepal’s strategic the 2008 economic crisis. Furthermore, by drawing on classical ideas in geopolitical location. It is also crucial for achieving the political goal of geographical and urban research on the interrelationship between ur­ all successive governments in Nepal, namely economic development, or banization and capital accumulation (Christophers, 2011; Harvey, 1985; bikas (the more symbolic representation in the Nepali vernacular), Lefebvre, 2003; Smith, 2010), as well as on scholarship that explores which has been accompanied, particularly in the last decade, by a clear contemporary urbanization patterns within China (Hsing, 2010), we emphasis on fast-tracking urban development. theorize the BRI as a major spatial fix to capital’s overaccumulation Secondly, and relatedly, based on an extroverted understanding of crisis (Harvey, 2016; Olinga-Shannon et al., 2019; Summers, 2016), and place (Massey, 1994) and in line with calls to explore the Belt and Road as a key expression of China’s emphasis on urbanization as a pathway to Initiative from the ground (de LT Oliveira et al., 2020; Murton & Lord, economic development and modernization. This is, inter alia, evident in 2020; Sidaway et al., 2020), we sought to understand the intertwined the strategic combination of BRI transport infrastructure with SEZs and policies, projects, discourses, and aspirations involved in BRI’s unfold­ investments in the built environment, and underlines the importance of ing in Nepal. By doing this, we aim to show how a Chinese-led strategy economic and trade connectivity for the BRI and its role in reducing coalesces with multiple national and local, private and state interests, spatial barriers by facilitating capital flows. and materialises within diverse urban contexts producing variegated What is of particular importance here is the way in which BRI-driven outcomes. In the case of Nepal, given that BRI infrastructures materi­ urban infrastructural development incorporates historically marginal alize in parallel with Chinese-funded reconstruction projects, this ne­ spaces into circuits of capital and establishes new spatial frontiers for cessitates engaging with the complex terrain of post-disaster politics global capitalism (Smith, 1996). This has been evident in Nepal and in a (Chand, 2017; Paudel & Le Billon, 2020) to understand how the latter number of peripheral sites along BRI’s corridors (Lesutis, 2020), which influences BRI-driven urban transformation, urban futures and people’s under the hegemonic narrative of reducing poverty and supporting na­ histories and memories (McKinnon et al., 2016; Watson, 2017). tional prosperity, have been subsumed under capitalist relations. It is Empirically, we draw on social science research that lasted from important to note here that in line with the Lefebvrian (Lefebvre, 1970) December 2019 to June 2021. This has involved on the ground and notion of generalized urbanization, we adopt a broader understanding of virtual ethnographic research focused on local communities’ stories and the urban as process of creating material infrastructures for production, experiences, including Newars (Indigenous inhabitants of Kathmandu), circulation, exchange, and consumption that is not strictly confined to in-depth interviews with urban activists, policy makers, including state urban agglomerations (Apostolopoulou, 2020). This is particularly officials, and civil society actors, primarily human rights organizations, relevant in Nepal, where the expansion of urbanization into places that and an extended analysis of policy and media documents. In our field­ are undergoing a rural-to-urban transition perforates the urban-rural work, we considered community differentiation across lines of class, divide and stresses the need to approach city and non-city landscapes, gender, ethnicity, and caste whereas field sites included both urban and or hinterlands, as dialectically co-produced spaces (Brenner & Katsikis, rural regions where infrastructure projects are either ongoing or pro­ 2020; Brenner & Schmid, 2015). jected to begin soon. By adopting a broad analytical and empirical lens Moreover, and relatedly, in dialogue with critical topography and that encompasses but also exceeds the terrain of the city, we placed recent writings on splanetary urbanization (Katz, 2021) and compara­ Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, the greater Kathmandu Valley, and tive urbanism (Robinson, 2021), we approach the novel phenomenon of strategic trade corridors like Rasuwagadhi, at the epicenter of our Silk Road Urbanization by studying the concrete and the particular to analysis.2 When COVID-19 related restrictions allowed us, we drew on trace its effects as they are etched on specific grounds, leaving space for Katz’s (2015) methodology to spatialize time and historize place the complexity and the uncertain spatialities of the urban to emerge. We through walks and conversations with local inhabitants. Our purpose in also aim to respond to recent calls in BRI scholarship to move from an the analysis was to incorporate as much as possible the way residents of analysis of the initiative as primarily a discursive field of knowledge, Nepal perceive the social, spatial, cultural, and physical transformations towards understanding it as a materially grounded field of practice of their communities, as workers scramble to complete the delayed (Oakes, 2020). Towards achieving the latter, and in line with wider calls infrastructure and reconstruction projects where banners proclaim the in critical geographical scholarship to stop treating urban infrastructures everlasting friendship between Nepal and China. “as technical, hidden, and taken-for-granted domains” (Graham & Marvin, 2022, p. 1), we theorize BRI infrastructures as complex socio-technical assemblages that mediate urban lives and shape people’s everyday perceptions and experiences of subjecthood in the city (Datta & Ahmed, 2020; Graham and McFarlane, 2015). Theorizing urban in­ frastructures and networks both from the point of their political-economic production and their social, cultural, and political 2 We initially planned to conduct research in several other places but this was significance (Kaika & Swyngedouw, 2005) unravels the contradictory not possible due to COVID restrictions. This means that the analysis of road forces and unequal power relations through which these are produced projects is based on discussions with residents of the broader Kathmandu area and lived. It also reveals that their provision, maintenance, and trans­ and online interviews. formation are contested and politicized, which enables and embodies 2 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 various forms of violence (Datta & Ahmed, 2020; Rodgers & O’Neill, struggle for the acquisition of political and material power is under­ 2012). In line with the above, we adopt a grounded analysis of the BRI pinned by a common refrain that somehow manages to ostensibly unite that places at its core the way urban dwellers experience urban in­ all factions of the political-economic nexus: bikas. frastructures, and how these (re)shape urban lives, memories, hopes, Bikas is a charged word in Nepal. It is the promise of uninterrupted fears, and aspirations for the future. hydroelectricity marked by local displacement (Rest, 2012). It is un­ A grounded analysis of the BRI also acknowledges the complex role hinged urban expansion shrouded by photochemical smog (Pradhan of geopolitical rivalries and social struggles in the way these projects et al., 2020). And it is every pathway that claims to liberate Nepal from unfold. As noted in the introduction, social struggles in Nepal cannot be the doldrums of “least-development” to an economically developed understood without considering the role of post-disaster politics after state, a spectre that “grips the collective imagination in Nepal” (Pigg, the 2015 earthquakes. As Paudel and Le Billon (2020) explain, disaster 1993, p. 48).5 Bikas is an everyday occurrence (Pigg, 1992; Shrestha, and post-disaster reconstruction processes lead to wider socioeconomic 1995), and the congregation of multiple international development and and political restructuring, which offers particular sections of capital aid organizations is symbolic of the field-trials and experiments that are major opportunities for accumulation. Foreign post-disaster aid has contested and professed as the correct mode for Nepal’s future pros­ historically embodied a geopolitical dimension, strengthened bilateral perity. While the UK, the US and Japan have traditionally been the ties, and helped powerful donors to advance their interests by taking major providers of development aid, during the last decade both China advantage of states of emergency (Chand, 2017). In Nepal, post-disaster and India have been added in the list of top donors. The national aid and reconstruction processes constitute a complex terrain of importance of development has rendered the presence or absence of its geopolitical manoeuvring and geoeconomic accumulation (Paudel & Le proxies, such as roads, hospitals, and hydropower facilities, a symbol of Billon, 2020) that intertwine with the geoeconomic/geopolitical aspi­ the perceived presence or absence of the state (Nightingale et al., 2018; rations of the BRI vision, and the actual, material impacts of specific BRI see also; Harvey & Knox, 2015; Larkin, 2008). As many interviewees projects. The contested nature of space and the multiple, shifting, and told us, in Nepal, improved infrastructure is equated with a state that potentially unbounded identities of place (Massey, 1994) are particu­ cares for its constituents, whereas crumbling buildings and half-paved larly obvious in the context of post-disaster politics and inextricably roads are signs of a government by and for itself. linked to the contested terrain of disaster memory (Campbell, 2018; In recent history, bikas has been explicitly linked to urbanisation, Hutt et al., 2021; Simpson, 2014). As McKinnon et al. (2016) point out, with Nepal becoming one of the fastest urbanising countries globally disaster memory has a clear spatial aspect: processes of rebuilding can (UNDESA, 2014). Its demographic transformation is characterized by a assert particular visions of the past to ensure that reconstruction politics rapidly growing population density along highways and road corridors, in the post-disaster period are defined by the interests of hegemonic especially close to the borders with India and China, confirming to ob­ social groups. Indeed, marginalized communities are often excluded servers the fact that infrastructural connectivity is a key driver of ur­ from rebuilding processes, and their devastation is seen as an opportu­ banization (MoUD, 2017). Currently, the only city with more than one nity for renewal and profit (David, 2008). The second key element for million residents is Kathmandu Metropolitan City, whereas Kathmandu understanding BRI’s unfolding in the context of Nepal is the paramount Valley is the hub of Nepal’s urbanization with nearly 22.4% of its na­ important of bikas (Pigg, 1992; Shrestha, 1995) throughout the coun­ tional urban population residing in the area. Between 2014 and 2015, an try’s history. As we will see in the following sections, the BRI has become impressive number (159) of new municipalities were designed, bringing embedded into the perennial question of bikas, offering Nepal’s politi­ their total number to 217 and the urban (municipal) population to 40% cians and development administrators a pathway to elevate the country of the total population. This administrative transformation has not been beyond the “least-developed” state within which global economic matched by a reciprocal development of essential urban facilities, ser­ indices have placed it for decades. It is precisely on the latter that next vices and infrastructures (MoUD, 2017). Despite fetishizing urban section focuses on. growth and portraying it as the symbol, prerequisite and incentive of prosperity, a coordinated urban strategy is still absent. This is evidenced 3. The quest for bikas in Nepal and the BRI as an agent of urban in the low quality of urban infrastructures and services, including water transformation: “Silk Road, here we come”3 supply, sanitation and solid waste management, inadequate housing, transport and energy infrastructures, uneven urban poverty, and the Nepal’s politics has been characterised by an oscillating joust be­ rapid loss of open spaces in urban areas (ibid). Despite aspirations that tween and within different governance forms. This has included the government-induced fast-track urbanization would act as a catalyst for abolition of the Panchayat system in 1991, the fragile multi-party de­ the modernization of Nepal’s traditional rural-based society, urban mocracy marked by repeated shifts in ministerial regimes, the Maoist growth has been haphazard, with the economic base of urban areas still uprising, the dissolution of parliament, the regression to autocracy and remaining weak and unable to support the development of adjacent the abolition of the 239-year monarchy in 2008 (Adhikari, 2014; Thapa, rural regions (ADB, 2010). 1992). More recent political developments include the establishment of These infrastructural challenges along with Nepal’s dependence on the 2015 constitution,4 the first provincial elections in 2017 (Malagodi, foreign development aid (Regmi, 2017) are essential to understand the 2018), and the dominance of the Nepal Communist Party at the federal, country’s evolving relation with China and BRI’s role as a key driver of municipal and local levels of government. The latter was characterised urban transformation. Even though Sino-Nepal relations have been by a historical majority in the parliament, a transformation interpreted cordial over the past decades, the 7.8 magnitude earthquake of April as a rejection of the Indian-aligned Nepali Congress Party (Paudel & Le 2015 marked the intensification of the two countries’ financial and Billon, 2020). While these mutations have wrestled the accumulation of geopolitical relations. In September 2015, Nepal was plunged into a power from one hand of the polity to another, it has had real implica­ humanitarian crisis after India forced an economic blockade in the tions on the lived experiences, aspirations, and imagined urban futures southern border6 just months after the earthquake. While its causes were of Nepal’s citizens (TRIAL International, 2017). Yet, the perpetual shrouded in accusations and denials, and despite India’s expectations that it would convince Nepal to consider the demands of Madhesi ethnic 3 “Silk Road, here we come” was the title of an article in The Kathmandu Post 5 in April 2017 citing Nepal’s Prime Minister statement after his meeting with the https://thediplomat.com/2018/06/is-nepal-ready-to-become-a-developing- Chinese Defense Minister. country/. 4 6 https://thediplomat.com/2015/09/nepals-new-constitution-65-years-in-th India had imposed an economic blockade to Nepal also in 1989 due to the e-making/. purchase of Nepal’s government of anti-aircraft guns from China. 3 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 groups in its revised constitution,7 the blockade served as a proof to the the BRI15 that were eventually brought down to 9 after negotiations with Nepali state that it was grossly dependent on India for vital economic the Chinese side. A key part of the agreement was the commitment to support. According to official statistics, the trade embargo led to a sig­ develop an ambitious Trans-Himalayan Multi-Dimensional Connectivity nificant drop in exports, imports, and shipments that caused shortages in Network16 of new trade routes and transport infrastructure, which essential goods (Nayak, 2018). included a Cross-Border China-Nepal Railway (hereon the Railway17). Increasing criticism about Nepal’s dependence on India8 led to a While it remains unclear which additional projects may be included in reorientation towards China, which was reinforced by the political the BRI, the signing of a BRI MoU and Xi Jinping’s visit to Nepal, the first consolidation of the Communist Party of KP Oli that won the 2017 by a Chinese president since 1996, set the scene for the increasing elections on an anti-Indian plank, as Oli reached out to China to lessen involvement of Chinese enterprises in Nepal’s infrastructure, including the over-reliance on India. In the post-2008 era, Chinese influence was numerous investments in smart cities, road construction, hydropower gaining momentum in Nepal, and in 2014, China’s foreign direct in­ projects and industrial parks. This revealed an ambitious Chinese vestment had surpassed India’s for the first time.9 In March 2016, Nepal approach to strategically link the BRI with broader trans-Himalayan and China signed the Transit Transport Agreement (TTA)10. This connectivity plans, and it marked a new era of BRI-related infra­ allowed Nepal to access a number of Chinese sea and land ports and structural myths in Nepal. enabled trade with third countries by shortening arrival times for in­ ternational cargo. The ports included four Chinese seaports in Tianjin, 4. Chasing invisible voices: post-disaster memories and the Shenzhen, Lianyungang and Zhanjiang, and three dry ports in Lanzhou, reconstruction of Basantapur Tower Lhasa and Shigatse.11 The vitality of Sino-Nepali relations can be further explained by Nepal’s recent history. The Maoists had waged a civil war By being a controversial site of Chinese aid and reconstruction, we from 1996 to 2006, which culminated in the dissolution of the monar­ consider Durbar Square in Kathmandu City particularly relevant to chical regime, the signing of the comprehensive peace accord, and the discuss issues about the past, present, and future of Nepal’s develop­ gradual assimilation of the former rebels into Nepalese institutional mental state and ongoing urban transformation since the country’s in­ politics. Political observers believed that the Chinese Communist Party clusion in the BRI. Chinese commitments to Durbar Square’s gave significant financial and military support to the rebels, training reconstruction speak to increasing patterns of Chinese involvement in their ideologues in both theory and practice (Adhikari, 2014). Nepal, especially after the earthquake and Nepal’s official involvement It was within the above context that Nepal’s government enthusi­ in the BRI. astically embraced the BRI. The initiative was seen as a major oppor­ Durbar Square is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and palace grounds tunity for a landlocked country like Nepal to improve its transport of the former city-state of the same name (circa 1200–1700 CE) that was connectivity and its position in international trade, two long-standing severely damaged by the 2015 earthquake, or maha bhukampa in the factors that have hindered the country’s urban growth. Governmental local vernacular.18 Several of its temples and monuments date back to aspirations have been obvious in the lavish grandiosity12 that accom­ the 3rd Century CE,19 and over time the Square morphed into the his­ panied Xi Jinping’s state visit to Nepal in October 2019 and the signing torical city’s commercial centre and marketplace. The temples, shrines, of a 20-point agreement between the two countries pertaining to infra­ and stone waterspouts scattered across the Square are not only frag­ structure development, people-to-people connectivity, and Nepal’s ments of a former kingdom, but embody the memories of the living: the reiteration to the “One China Policy”. The agreement was an extension Taleju Bhawani Temple, Panchmukhi Temple, the shrine of Kaal of a joint communique issued by both governments after the conclusion Bhairava, and the Saraswoti Temple are actively created by locals and of the 2nd Belt and Road Forum in April 2019 and built on Nepalese visitors who weave through the ancient alcoves of the Square, pay their Prime Minister K.P Oli’s visit to Beijing in 2018.13 As Bidhya Dev respects, and continue onwards, only to return once more and inject new Bhandari, the President of Nepal, stated at the 2nd Belt and Road Forum meaning into the cityscape. But after the earthquake, many of these in Beijing: “The far-sighted vision of President Xi to build a community culturally vital monuments were severely damaged, including the of shared future for mankind through Belt and Road Initiative carries a Nautalle Durbar (hereon Basantapur Tower) and the Dharara Tower, huge potential […] For a landlocked country like Nepal, connectivity is both of whose shadows loomed large over Kathmandu’s collective of paramount importance in its socio-economic development”.14 memory due to their deep political and cultural significance. Five years Nepal’s government initially proposed 35 projects to be included in later, 4.5 billion USD in international aid has done very little to affect the structural malignancies that have stymied short- and long-term recon­ struction and adaptation. For one of us, as a citizen of Kathmandu, prior visits to the Square 7 The Madhesh movement is a social and political struggle initiated by the were a Proustian affair, where the quotidian conversations in teashops, Madhesi peoples, an ethnically diverse group that historically inhabited the curio stores, temple fronts, open markets, and ritual offerings struck the Terai, or plains, of southern Nepal. Among other things, the movement seeks a deepest chords of memory. The Square was the beating heart of Kath­ greater representation of minorities in political organs, equal citizenship rights, mandu’s cultural identity, a colourful display of ethnic and aesthetic and an end to the social discriminations of caste and class inflicted on Madheshi communities. For an overview of the movement’s current issues, see: https://th urban diversity. As a local vendor and a bricklayer told us respectively: ewire.in/external-affairs/nepal-madhesi-protests. “It seemed the entire world passed through our streets. I’ve run my chiya 8 Nepal’s negotiations with India regarding transit rights began since the pasal [tea shop] for 45 years here in the Square. I used to have street 1978 treaty of trade and transit and remain a contentious issue in India-Nepal bilateral relations and a major electoral issue in Nepal (Nayak, 2018). 9 https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/china-is-largest-fdi -source-for-nepal-overtakes-india/article5618081.ece. 10 15 http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/asiapacific/2018-09/07/c_1374524 https://www.vifindia.org/article/2019/october/11/chinese-investments-in 22.htm. -nepal-in-the-context-of-bri. 11 16 http://archive.nepalitimes.com/blogs/thebrief/2016/03/21/nepal-gains- https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202012/24/WS5fe3d1dea31024ad0ba9 access-to-ports/. de75.html. 12 17 http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-10/13/c_138467212.htm. http://www.beltandroadforum.org/english/n100/2019/0427/c36-1311. 13 https://www.financialexpress.com/infrastructure/railways/now-china-and html. 18 -nepal-to-build-railway-line-linking-tibet-to-kathmandu/1216637/. https://theconversation.com/the-history-of-kathmandu-valley-as 14 http://www.hakahakionline.com/en/9104/belt-and-road-cooperation-sh -told-by-its-architecture-41103. 19 aping-a-brighter-shared-future/. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kathmandu-durbar-square. 4 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 workers, merchants, priests, tourists, neighbours sharing stories, our the neighbourhood. But the public consultations that were held made troubles, our hopes.” no difference because they had already worked behind our backs. The earthquake gave a pre-text for increasing foreign influence and And: now the BRI is used to curb any opposition.” “I cannot explain the reason why, but caste divisions did not seem to And: matter in the Square. Even in my childhood, when caste played a greater role in society, our communities in the ‘sahar’ [city] invited everyone, and “The history of Kathmandu is erased every day. When the president we got along with everyone. Now I don’t recognize my own city”. of China came here to talk about Nepal’s role to the Belt and Road, they said a lot about cultural similarities. How can that be when the While this recent rhetoric of unfamiliarity may have been initially old architectural styles of the Square’s temples are being replaced by tied to demographic transitions after the Nepalese Civil War20, it is the something completely different? We sent a petition to our local conferral of the Square’s post-earthquake reconstruction to the China municipal authorities asking them to incorporate what was lost. But International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA), a sub- we got nothing.” ministry-level executive agency under the State Council of the Peo­ ple’s Republic of China established in 2018, that drives a lot of the un­ And so Durbar Square, similar to Jyatha,22 has gradually become a ease among Kathmandu’s residents. China’s post-disaster aid consisted terrain through which “notions of Nepali’s literal and figurative place of 25 reconstruction projects.21 This included, along with the Square, vis-à-vis China get[s] enacted, narrated, reshaped, and contested” the construction of roads, schools, hospitals and heritage sites, which as (Linder, 2019, p. 165). Within this tense social climate, emblematic our interviewees later explained to us, were tied to China’s broader Chinese-funded interventions like BRI mandated projects are perceived plans for Nepal in the context of the BRI. The latter has been particularly as a challenge to local people’s capacity for self-governance and evident in the case of the restoration of the nine-story Basantapur Tower self-determination, and a potential threat to their culture, identities and that had been submitted in March 2017 and approved within only a livelihoods: month by Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation. The “First it was water [hydropower projects], then roads and the BRI Rail­ restoration was supposed to last five years and cost nearly 90 million way, now our land, our culture, and our capital city. Where does this yuan (US$13 million), all of which was paid by the Chinese government. end?” (Urban activist) The tower has fast become both a symbol of the increasing ties between Nepal and China and a key stage for the controversies surrounding Local opposition should not be seen as a simple case of “betrayal” Chinese-funded post-disaster aid and Nepal’s role in the BRI. about the handover of a historical site to a foreign state. It reflects What we observed during our discussions with residents of Kath­ longstanding concerns about the direction of urban development in mandu is that there is currently a palpable wave of apprehension to­ Nepal, the palpitations related to fast-tracking urbanization, and the BRI wards what locals see as the submission of their jiwan [life] and samaj role’s in driving the latter. As a local resident put it: [society] to a culture that is largely alien to them. This is primarily due “What happens here [in Durbar Square] is a reflection of what happens to their complete exclusion from the reconstruction process and the across the country. We still lack basic, life-supporting urban in­ government’s ignorance towards their social and cultural knowledge of frastructures but they are building –or promising to build nobody really the area. As two local vendors told us: knows– four smart cities across the valley and new industrial parks on “Just look around you - do you recognise the words and notices around Indigenous land. They destroy historical settlements -as in Khokana- and Basantapur? Even Kasthamandap has been draped with the Chinese flag. threaten livelihoods and the only thing they talk about is the BRI, foreign Where do you think the hand of our government lies?” investors and urban growth.” And: Therefore, outside the government, the BRI is widely seen as another mutation by which the state is reorganising the accumulation of political “I heard that they would begin teaching Chinese in Durbar High School. It and economic power among the elites, “rearticulating their interests was good that the Chinese government helped re-build it, but is it right to according to where they fit within one of the imagined belts and roads” just give the curriculum to them?” (Klinger, 2020, p. 2). As a local vendor noted: विकासको नाममा जेपनि गर्दे भो In their research on agrarian communities in southern Nepal, Rankin [“Anything can be done in the name of bikas”], which leads us to the et al. (2018) note how the transition to a federal republic initiated de­ exploration of current projects to boost urban development in Nepal. bates on the legitimacy of traditional authorities and raised questions Fast-tracking urban development in Nepal: “Smart” cities, special about the decentralisation of decision-making power. The authors economic zones and contested roads. illustrated how district-level governance became the core site of political Under the shadow of construction and ruin, we also spoke with local contestation, where “structural violence and transformative change are residents about how the reconstruction of Durbar Square relates to and negotiated in practice” (ibid, 294). Similar resistances are found in the reflects wider, ongoing urban transformations in their country. Our Square, where historians, conservationists, and urban activists openly conversations focused on the frenzy of construction both in the capital challenge the federal government and their reconstruction policies, and across places in a direction that in most cases does not reflect peo­ seeing them as proof of the unconditional commitment to the BRI. Locals ple’s needs. As urban activists explained to us, Nepal’s long history of have mobilised a strong movement against the government’s decision to fragmented urban development has been hindered by the lack of road permit foreign development firms rather than Kathmandu district’s access (see also ADB, 2010). It therefore did not come as a surprise when conservationists over the maintenance of the Square and surrounding all government tiers -local, state and federal-prioritized road construc­ sites. As urban activists told us: tion after the first elections under the 2015 Constitution. What is of particular importance, however, are the changes that occurred after the “Right from the beginning, it was about asking for money rather than signing of the BRI MoU. learning from local people. We have the closest connection to the Firstly, as state officials explained to us, there has been an increasing Square and its culture. We know each of our sisters and brothers in 20 22 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/redefining-nepal-internal-migrat We refer here to Linder’s (2019, 165) analysis of the ongoing development ion-post-conflict-post-disaster-society. of Jyatha into a Chinatown enclave through the stark increase of Chinese in­ 21 http://np.china-embassy.org/eng/EconomyTrade/chinaaid/t1770299.htm. fluence on its material, demographic, and social landscape. 5 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 involvement of Chinese contractors in Nepal’s infrastructure and urban disproportionally affecting women, children and older people.29 Despite development projects. This has manifested both in the emergence of new the Supreme Court’s decision in favour of affected communities30, city projects and in the fact that already agreed projects changed hands. authorities continued the expansion works. This led to a major protest in Secondly, the construction of new roads or the upgrade of existing ones February 20, 21.31 As protestors told us: has been linked to the creation of new industrial parks, SEZs, and smart “There are two realities in Nepal: the one is that of people who are cities as part of an orchestrated effort to fast-track urbanization. This has negatively affected by road projects because there are losing their land, led to a situation where a number of new projects are springing up their houses, their livelihoods and their cultural heritage. The other is that promising prosperous urban futures, but are then indefinitely delayed. of the government and their Chinese partners that has been systematically At the same time, other projects are rapidly proceeding with no local downsizing these impacts and even celebrate these projects for bringing consultation, fair compensation, and rehabilitation plans, and without ‘happiness’32 to Nepali people”. adequate social and environmental impact assessments profoundly affecting livelihoods, socionatures and places. An indicative case is the Importantly, as already noted above, in the post-2015 era and after Rasuwagadhi-Kathmandu Road Upgrade, one of 9 BRI projects that have the signing of the BRI MoU, the sharp rise in road projects has been been officially agreed between Nepal and China. The project is funded accompanied by a governmental support for smart cities, SEZs and in­ by the Chinese government and implemented by Tibet Tianlu Company dustrial parks and their portrayal as catalysts for urban growth. Even Limited, and its MoU was signed in 201923 between Nepal’s Ministry of though most of these plans were not new, it was the signing of the BRI Finance and CIDCA. Both sides have flagged the upgrade as a key MoU that created hopes that the combination of urban infrastructures development to promote trade along the Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border, with industrial projects and investments in the built environment was through which 20% of Nepal’s trade with China occurs. Thus, the project feasible and had the potential to open a pathway towards national has been advertised as a critical infrastructure that would bring national prosperity. It is indicative that the first SEZ (called at that time an prosperity. Nonetheless, its implementation has been characterised by “Export Processing Zone”) had been established in Nepal in 2000 and for major delays, attributed by the Chinese contractor to the project’s 16 years it has not been in full operation.33 The parliament approved a complexity. It has also created major controversies due to the Chinese dedicated SEZ Act in 2016 for the first time to provide a number of side’s insistence that the Nepal government clear all settlements and strong incentives for investors, including exemptions on customs duties, housing infrastructure, including electricity poles, drinking water pipes, simpler registration processes, and the prohibition of labor strikes. As and houses before starting the construction. people involved in the process explained to us, this happened just before The key role of the BRI in boosting Chinese investments in Nepal, and the signing of the BRI MoU and its primary target was to attract Chinese the striking contradiction between promises and actual on-the-ground investments by promising a smooth construction process. This became impacts is also evident in the case of the Butwal-Narayanghat Road evident in 2018 when the first MoU to build a SEZ in Rasuwagadhi near Improvement Project, which interviewees included in the long list of the Nepal-China border was signed between China and Nepal. In 2019, controversial projects. The project is financed by the Asian Development following an increasing interest from China to invest in Nepal’s SEZs, an Bank and forms part of the East-West Highway. It has been promoted by amendment to the Act34 was introduced offering even more favorable Nepal’s government as key for connecting urban centres and boosting conditions to investors. As interviewees involved in these processes urban growth through the establishment of ten new “model cities” along explained to us: its path. After the cancellation of the first selection process24 and “In 2019, a MoU was signed for the China-Nepal Friendship Industrial following the signing of the BRI MoU, China State Construction Engi­ Park, that is located 8km south of Damak city by a joined Chinese-Nepali neering Corporation Ltd. (CSCEC) with the support of GCE Group, a venture company and Nepal’s Investment Board (IBN). The Board’s company based in Nepal,25 won the contract in December 20, 18.26 The guide is now also available in Chinese which shows quite well who they road is expected to impact 36 households including Indigenous people, consider their primary target group”. and threatens to displace local people who will lose their land.27 In January 2021, with only 2% of the work completed, the project’s con­ The IBN is a government body focused on promoting large-scale in­ struction halted due to protests by labourers who went on strike vestment that not only facilitated the agreement but also stated (through demanding a minimum wage from the Chinese contractor. In March its CEO) that the Park, “by utilizing at its maximum the economic op­ 2021, the conflict around workers’ rights violations escalated, leading to portunities offered by the BRI”, would be a “milestone” for industrial a clash between the contractors and the labourers.28 infrastructure development and urban growth in Nepal. In December Mass and forced evictions of Kathmandu’s Indigenous Newar ethnic 2021, local communities organised a public protest against the Park,35 community have also been caused by the Kathmandu Valley Road citing the inadequate compensation for land acquisition and limited Expansion Project, supported by both China and the Asian Development transparency on the decision-making process. As a local activist told us: Bank, which has led to the demolition of more than 15,000 houses, “Nepal has a long history of controversial and unfair acquisition of lands. The current construction frenzy wakes hard memories and historical 23 https://myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com/news/chinese-team-starts-upgra dation-work/; https://kathmandupost.com/national/2019/10/14/nepal-chin 29 a-sign-mou-to-develop-50-km-road-linking-kathmandu-and-rasuwagadi-a-town https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublic -bordering-china. CommunicationFile?gId=23122. 24 30 https://kathmandupost.com/money/2018/03/08/butwal-narayanghat-roa https://kathmandupost.com/valley/2018/06/30/sc-puts-brake-on-road- d-improvement-plan-held-up. expansion. 25 31 http://gce.com.np/project/sasec-roads-improvement-project-narayanghat https://kathmandupost.com/visual-stories/2021/02/28/civil-society-roa -butwal-highway-road-improvement-project/. d-expansion-victims-protest-in-front-of-kathmandu-metropolitan-city-office. 26 32 http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-03/23/c_137918192.htm. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/asiapacific/2019-01/29/c_13778451 27 http://gce.com.np/project/sasec-roads-improvement-project-narayanghat 2.htm 33 -butwal-highway-road-improvement-project/. https://thehimalayantimes.com/business/bhairahawa-sez-not-in-full-oper 28 https://english.khabarhub.com/2021/24/172744/. ation-even-after-20-years-of-launch. 34 https://nepaleconomicforum.org/neftake/special-economic-zone-first-ame ndment-act-2075-a-review-neftake-nepaleconomicforum/. 35 https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/locals-protest-china-sponsored-pr oject-in-damak. 6 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 injustices to people gradually destroying initial hopes that the BRI would national pride”38 and a “national liberation project”, the Expressway has offer a way out of rural poverty. What we often feel is that they see our been faced with major opposition. As activists explained to us, the same demands as obstacles to their profits and instead of taking them into year that the project passed to Chinese contractors, the Save Nepa Valley consideration they simply choose to act as there were never real people movement and Nepal Sanskritik Punarjagaran Abhiyan asked UNESCO, living in these places”. ILO and UN offices to intervene. They cited the threats of displacement of Indigenous Newar communities, violations of their land and resource The construction of roads and SEZs has been followed by investments rights, ignorance for their cultural heritage and ethnic identity, and in “strategic” market and border towns, and an emphasis on “smart city” adverse impacts in the historical settlements of Khokana and Bungamati. concepts (MoUD, 2017). Under the slogan of initiating an urban tran­ The two movements also referred to the cumulative impacts of fast- sition that would end rural poverty by securing modern and prosperous tracking urbanization by arguing that several interrelated infrastruc­ urban lives for Nepal’s subsistence society, and in line with the ture projects demanded land acquisition. These, inter alia, included the governmental decision to reclassify rural areas into urban, current plans Bagmati corridor, a Chinese-funded 132 KV transmission line39 and a include the creation of at least one smart metropolitan city in each of new smart city. As activists that have been involved in the protests told Nepal’s seven provinces, new cities along key highways combined with us: hi-tech businesses and industry hubs, and four smart cities in Kath­ mandu Valley. According to the Kathmandu Valley Development Au­ “The road passes through cultivated agriculture land and requires the thority (KVDA), the goal is to equip smart cities with modern technology demolition of houses and the clearance of forest land. Opposition esca­ and urban services.36 In 2020, maps and images of the future smart cities lated in July 2020 when a major clash occurred between the police and in Kathmandu Valley were released. Nonetheless, the government local people at Khokana in the place where land has been acquired for the budget remains too low, and controversy around land acquisition con­ Expressway’s starting point40. […] People wanted to show that they are tinues to escalate, rendering unclear which of these plans actually reflect not invisible, they have been here, they are still here and they are excluded real agreements and which are speculative on the BRI, which in turn is from what is being planned on their land”. becoming cemented into Nepal’s new infrastructural myth. As an urban The Nepal Army’s decision to award the contract to Chinese con­ activist told us: tractors was short-lived. Following major controversies at the national “Isn’t it absurd to talk about ‘smart cities’ when existing cities are still level41 and local conflicts, in March 2021, Nepal’s parliamentary Public lacking basic urban infrastructures? When smart cities became a priority Accounts Committee (PAC) started an investigation regarding the bid­ for Nepal? It’s like they are using the opportunity of the earthquake ding process over concerns for a favorable treatment of Chinese com­ disaster to rebuild a different country […] This is not unrelated to the BRI panies.42 In April 2021, the PAC terminated the contract arguing that it – our government speculates to attract investors dazed by the country’s violated Nepal’s public procurement law.43 The future of the inclusion in the Chinese megaproject. Chinese investment is everywhere Expressway is currently uncertain and even though the project is still nowadays, I suspect in few years Chinese-funded projects would be considered key in discourses surrounding the BRI in Nepal, it shows the countless”. pivotal role of social contestation and conflicts in the production of any infrastructural and urban fix. In closing this section, it is important to briefly refer to the Expressway, as it is a project that was mentioned by several interviewees as an indicative example of not only increased Chinese involvement in 5. The China-Nepal cross-border railway: trans-himalayan infrastructure projects since the signing of the BRI MoU, but also of the connectivity, BRI infrastructural myths and post-disaster politics controversies attached to the latter. The Kathmandu-Terai/Madhesh Fast Track Road (Expressway) is a mega-highway project that aims to In the last part of our analysis, we are moving to Rasuwagadhi to connect urban areas in the central region with evolving urban centres in discuss the China-Nepal Cross-Border Railway. Currently the flagship the inner-Terai region. It forms part of a broader development of North- BRI project in Nepal, the Railway offers the allure of linking Nepal’s South road corridors designed to reduce travel distance from Kath­ urban nodes and smart cities into BRI’s global infrastructural networks. mandu to the South of Nepal, and between key trading points with India The Railway is proposed to start from Shigatse Railway Station in Tibet (Raxual) and China (Kerung). The first expression of interest occurred in and arrive at Kathmandu through the Himalayas, directly cutting 1996, but it was not until 2015 that its construction was given to the through Langtang National Park. The rail line from Shigatse to Gyirong Indian company Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Service (IL&FS). in Tibet reopened in 2014 and upgraded to an international port in The blockade by India led Nepal’s Supreme Court to halt the deal, and in 2017. Gyirong is considered a major gateway44 for the BRI in terms of 2017 the new Government gave the responsibility for construction promoting trade and economic connectivity, and crucial for transferring management to the Nepali Army.37 In 2020, the Nepali Army awarded Chinese products in Nepal and across South Asia.45 In what follows, we the contract to the Chinese contractor Poly Chhangda Engineering discuss the contradictory discourses that surround its construction Company and China State Construction Engineering Corporation showing the stark contrast between state and governmental aspirations Limited. As representatives of civil organizations that are active in the and people’s thoughts and experiences. area told us: “Nobody was surprised when the construction passed into Chinese in­ 38 https://www.nepalarmy.mil.np/fasttrack/home. terests. Even though the Expressway in not yet part of the BRI, at least 39 https://cemsoj.wordpress.com/2020/04/01/unesco-ilo-and-un-nep officially, its role for facilitating international trade and improving the al-office-called-to-take-actions-against-displacement-of-newars-in-khokana- accessibility of rural areas that have been now reclassified as urban is and-bungamati-due-to-fast-track-highway-and-other-projects/; https://www.th pivotal […] Everybody talks about how promising the combination of the ethirdpole.net/en/energy/transmission-lines-in-nepal/; https://thediplomat. Expressway with the BRI Railway will be”. com/2018/10/nepal-and-the-china-eu-lending-race/. 40 https://www.eadarsha.com/eng/clash-between-police-and-local-people-ta Despite its framing by Nepal’s government as an “infrastructure of kes-place-at-khokana/. 41 https://english.khabarhub.com/2021/01/153233/. 42 https://myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com/news/pac-to-probe-phase-2-co ntract-awarding-procedures-of-ktm-tarai-fast-track-project/. 36 43 https://www.nepalisansar.com/tourism/nepal-urbanization-kathma https://www.seetao.com/details/76665.html. 44 ndu-valley-to-have-four-smart-cities/. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1143629.shtml. 37 45 https://www.nepalarmy.mil.np/fasttrack/home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFTjeVW7g40. 7 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 The Railway is a challenging project that to transition from paper to dream” [sic] to transform from a landlocked to a land-linked country50. the physical plane would require an ingenuity of civil engineering not Nonetheless, stories from the ground put under scrutiny grandiose seen before within Nepal’s administrative boundaries. As interviewees expectations. What is described by its supporters as the “world’s highest told us, the results of the pre-feasibility study were never made publicly railroad” and a “miracle”51 is simultaneously criticized as a “dream” or available. Nonetheless, as sources from the Ministry of Physical Infra­ “futuristic” project52 by local residents in Rasuwagadhi, the proposed structure and Transportation confirmed, most concerns were confined to cross-border entry point of the Railway on the Nepal-China border, who the risks related to the region’s unique topography given that 98% of the find it hard to believe that the grandiose project will materialize in their Railway would have to be connected by tunnels and bridges (Bhushal, lifetimes. As a local shop owner told us: 2019). Technical challenges along with significant delays led several “We are still waiting to receive reliable information about the Railway. interviewees to question the Railway’s feasibility and China’s actual Nobody is sure where it will stop, when it will be ready, what impacts it commitment to it. Within a context of rising concerns, in May 2020, an will have and whether any compensation will be given. We are wondering article was published in the Silk Road Briefing46 stating that the if this train is real”. China-Nepal route over the Himalayas is now “open for business” referring to the route launching by China Railway Xian Group and China Controversy over the Railway is fueled by delays in its construction Railway Container Transport. Similarly, “the trans-Himalayan railway and major technical difficulties and has been followed by fears that line is not built yet, but first weekly Nepal-bound freight train arrives in dependence on foreign loans may have unfavourable economic out­ Xigatse” was the subtitle of another article referring to a cargo train comes for Nepal. In response to such concerns, the Chinese ambassador carrying COVID-19 medical supplies and construction material from in Nepal wrote in April 2019 that the BRI is not a debt trap but an Xi’a to Xigatse.47 These were transferred to Rasuwaghadi via trucks with “economic pie”. The ambassador also attributed delays to the the journey and cross-border trade seen as the TTA’s activation and the complexity of the Railway’s construction53 and reiterated that as “the commencement of the future –not yet built- Railway. In August 2020, Nepali government firmly adheres to one-China policy and does not amid increasing speculations, Chinese constructors shared photos in allow any anti-China activities on its soil”, China is also dedicated in social media from initial surveys.48 During the same period, Nepal’s “supporting Nepal’s efforts to safeguard national independence, sover­ government reiterated that the Railway was a critical project that would eignty and territorial integrity”.54 Similarly to Durbar Square, a signif­ grant the country land access to China’s eastern seaports and revitalize icant reason for concerns among the people we talked to comes from the urban centres along its way, most notably Kathmandu. As a Civil Servant fact that the Nepalese government have conceded almost the entire from the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport told us: logistical and construction operations to the Chinese side taking little consideration of both the communities and the environment on its front “Our land-locked geography has hindered our development. The BRI (Bhushal, 2019). Important controversy also exists about the Railway’s Railway presents a historical opportunity to expand global trade and link environmental impacts and potential threats to the snow leopard pop­ our cities with the world by cooperating with our close neighbour”. ulation in Langtang National Park. Already a prey to increasing retal­ This certainty cannot be explained without considering China’s iatory killings,55 the ancillary construction of roads and workers camps contribution to Nepal’s recovery from the earthquakes. Delays in India’s would open up a Pandora’s Box of illegal activities for the endangered relief assistance made China the first donor in terms of actual dis­ species. As environmentalists explained to us, there is also palpable bursements.49 Even though China directed a significant part of its aid to tension among local people that Shivapuri National Park, which lies to projects that were beneficial for its own interests, Chinese investors the south of the proposed Railway terminal, would fall victim to political pledged to invest $8.3 billion in infrastructure, the largest amount by corruption, with resource extraction justified on the pretext of bikas. And foreigners in Nepal’s development history. It was under the shadow of even though there is some optimism that nature will be saved due to the this diplomatic bonhomie and bitter experiences from the Indian improbability of the rhetoric of progress actually mutating into a blockade, that the Railway became a generous display of neighbourly physical transport corridor, “I doubt that this railway will be completed friendship and goodwill. As civil servants working in the Ministry of even in half a century” as a local activist told us, the lack of transparency Physical Infrastructure and Transport put it: is constantly fueling local people’s and civil society actors’ worries. Nonetheless, the Railway by acting as a symbol of a fast-approaching “We suffered during the maha bhukampa [Great Earthquake], but Chi­ trans-Himalayan connectivity has already started to have tangible ef­ nese aid was swift. They not only provided emergency support but they are fects. After the declaration of Rasuwagadhi as the main international also helping us reconstruct Durbar Square and other historical sites across border with China in 2017, there has been speculation in real-estate and Kathmandu.” land prices along the Kathmandu-Rasuwagadhi highway and an And: expansion of black markets (Murton et al., 2016). Hotel owners and ventors are expecting that the Railway will boost the housing market, “The railway will be proof of the impenetrable relationship between our tourism and commercial development. Rising land prices have been also two countries. It will strengthen our cultural ties and work for Nepal’s reported in Timure, the closest town to Rasuwagadhi, where in May prosperity.” 2019, Nepal’s Intermodal Transport Development Board signed an Following a similar line of argumentation, President Xi during his agreement with the Chinese company Tibet Fuli Construction Group Co. visit to Kathmandu stated that, by developing a Trans-Himalayan Network linked to BRI’s corridors, China would help Nepal to “realise its 50 https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/promises-trans-himalayan-lin k-china-grows-influence-nepal. 46 51 https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2020/05/27/xian-kathmandu- https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/nepal/. 52 combined-road-rail-cargo-service-launched/. https://www.thethirdpole.net/en/nature/nepal-china-railway/; https://th 47 https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/new-china-nepal-rail-corridor/. ewire.in/south-asia/nepal-china-railway. 48 53 https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/bri-and-trans-himalayan-connectivit https://kathmandupost.com/national/2019/05/24/chinese-envoy-says- y/. cross-border-railway-is-not-an-overnight-project. 49 54 https://reliefweb.int/report/nepal/china-donates-483-mln-usd-nepal-post- https://myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com/news/new-era-new-opportunitie quake-rehabilitation-reconstruction. s/. 55 https://kathmandupost.com/climate-environment/2020/10/22/retaliato ry-killings-major-challenge-for-snow-leopard-conservation. 8 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 Limited for the construction of a dry port.56 The port, located at 2.5 km embeddedness of each project and the complexity of the from the Nepal-China border, is expected to facilitate bilateral trade via socio-economic, political and cultural conditions that dominate in each land routes and has been opposed by local communities due to the city/country (Han & Webber, 2020; Joniak-Lüthi, 2020), as recent calls inadequate compensation for the acquisition of their lands.57 According for grounded analyses of the BRI emphasize.61 to Nepal Monitor,58 the Chief District Officer of Rasuwa had argued that In the case of Nepal, the BRI has already served as a geopolitical, addressing local demands was impossible since it would risk the aban­ geoeconomic, and cultural metaphor (Sidaway & Woon, 2017) to frame donment of the project by the Chinese contractors. controversial urban infrastructural interventions as projects of “national Even though the quest for bikas, unequivocally promoted by Kath­ pride” and “liberation” that promise to revitalize and redefine long-due mandu’s political elite, wishes to subsume subaltern voices and governmental plans. The fact that some projects have not yet material­ opposing views, slow progress on the constructions offers a stark ized, or have been marked by persisting controversies over their scope contrast between reality and rhetoric.59 As we observed during our and impacts, has not affected the governmental rhetoric, at least not fieldwork, Rasuwagadhi and surrounding towns are becoming places significantly. This is not surprising though. Flagship projects, like the where expectations for a long due urban growth and access to basic Railway, have become new vehicles towards Naya [new] Nepal, along urban infrastructures increasingly coexist with unfulfilled promises. with many other infrastructural myths that preceded and defined the Within this mélange of state and foreign actors, civil society organiza­ country’s modern history (Manchanda, 2008). tions, and public controversy about the perennial rhetoric of bikas, the Myth-making has been a central apparatus of the Nepali state’s Railway has taken the role of another infrastructural myth, one among a arsenal against political discord and discontent. Children in school have cascade of roads to bikas that has filled Nepal’s cultural imagination been constantly told to be proud of Nepal’s bountiful water resources over the past thirty years. As a local resident put it: and its hydropower potential. Projects long before the BRI, such as Melamchi Water Supply project (Rest, 2019), have been delayed by a “Why don’t they prove themselves by building the roads they promised 15 year, every year, with the population’s thirst appeased by the prospect of years ago and stop speaking about dream projects?” imagining the endless supply of drinking water that is sure to reach each home once it is completed … next year. In the latest update to the 6. Conclusion: cities of ruins and contested urban futures Melamchi myth, Kathmandu’s residents were finally treated to three weeks of water supply from the project, only to be told that it would be “Here, in the new town, boredom is pregnant with desires, frustrated indefinitely cut off due to “problems” that have yet to be concretely frenzies, unrealized possibilities. A magnificent life is waiting just around defined. Beyond Melamchi, one of us remembers the constant refrain the corner, and far, far away. It is waiting like the cake is waiting when from politicians and educators that Nepal would one day surpass the there’s butter, milk, flour and sugar. This is the realm of freedom. It is an material wealth of Switzerland; that Nepal would reclaim the region of empty realm.” Kalapani, which the government claims was illegally annexed by India; Lefebvre (1995). and that the country’s rivers will be fully exploited to relinquish the dependency on energy imports and finally turn the country into a model Among the frenzy of actual and promised infrastructure projects in of self-sufficiency, not unlike the small battalion of Nepali soldiers Nepal, one can clearly identify some of the key characteristics of Silk whose bravery managed to hold off the British East India Company and Road urbanization, most notably the synchronized assemblage of spe­ convinced them to stay on the other side of the border. cific urban spatial components consisting of a combination of major These deeply embedded national myths are now perceiving new transport infrastructure projects with SEZs, smart cities, hydropower meaning in the context of an emerging BRI myth that exceeds the na­ projects, and industrial parks (Apostolopoulou, 2021a, 2021b; 2021c; tional borders and imagination of Nepal and promises a fast- Apostolopoulou et al, 2022). This involves the extended acquisition of approaching urban transformation that will profoundly change the land as a means to enable and leverage urban development, a key future of the country. And even though the latter is being systematically determinant of fast-tracking urbanization within China (Hsing, 2010) used to curve potential discomfort and discontent for the frenzy of that has been “exported” in several countries along the New Silk Road. constructions across the country, the effects of these newly blended Nonetheless, one will also see that Silk Road Urbanization is nothing but infrastructural myths are not only ideological but they also have sig­ straightforward. The materialization of the majority of BRI projects, nificant material impacts on places, socionatures and livelihoods. Most despite official statements from the governments of Nepal and China, notably, they increasingly show a different, but not less detrimental, and expectations for a fast-approaching urban growth that will end rural aspect of infrastructural violence (Rodgers & O’Neill, 2012). What we poverty, depends on and is affected by geopolitical rivalries, particularly mean by that is that in the case of BRI projects that actually materialize, between Nepal, China and India60, endless negotiations, unstable local the belated arrival of long-desired urban infrastructures does not suc­ coalitions (Mayer & Zhang, 2020), and escalating social contestation. ceed in addressing the chronic lack of access to essential infrastructures, This underlines the need to conceptualize Silk Road urbanization as a like water supply, that has characterised everyday life in Nepal. The relational and contested process that is subject to the spatial material and affective precarity (Datta & Ahmed, 2020) and deprivation that exclusion without infrastructure has created for decades on Nepali people, and that has disproportionally affected the most vulnerable, is 56 https://kathmandupost.com/money/2019/05/13/chinese-firm-signs-con being exacerbated by the arrival of controversial infrastructural projects tract-to-build-dry-port-in-timure; https://www.recordnepal.com/wire/nepal- that instead of actually providing prosperous urban lives and being new-trade-route-with-china-via-rasuwagadhi/. enriching, as the hegemonic rhetoric claims, remain exclusionary and 57 https://kathmandupost.com/money/2016/04/30/timure-locals-protest-ov have detrimental effects for the majority of local people. Indeed, in the er-land-acquisition. post-disaster era and following the signing of the BRI MoU, the 58 https://nepalmonitor.org/reports/view/9985. capital-intensive BRI-driven urban transformation of Nepal has inten­ 59 https://www.recordnepal.com/wire/nepal-new-trade-route-with-china-vi sified the structural exclusion from avenues of social-economic a-rasuwagadhi/. 60 It is indicative that Prime Minister Oli stated that even though joining the BRI was in Nepal’s national interest, the government does not want to under­ 61 mine its relationship with India (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/so See two special issues published in 2020 in Political Geography (http uth-asia/nepal-will-carefully-weigh-use-of-funds-from-china-nepal-envo s://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/political-geography/special-issue/10 y/articleshow/58830864.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_med H61ZGZNZD) and Environment and Planning C (https://journals.sagepub. ium=text&utm_campaign=cppst). com/toc/epc/38/5). 9 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 advancement on grounds of caste, ethnicity, gender and region that largely a sign of diplomatic bonhomie and development aid, the state- characterized the action of donors and NGOs before the earthquake mandated, overarching global geo-political vision embodied in the BRI (Hutt et al., 2021). The latter along with the lack of proper consultation indicates that Nepal has been gradually consolidated into the network of and participation, the extensive acquisition of land, the displacement of China’s physical and ideological nodes. This is clear in the joint state­ the most vulnerable social groups, and the violation of workers’ rights in ments between the two governments and the efforts to institutionalise the locales where BRI projects are materialized (see also Beazley & BRI’s role in the realisation of Nepal’s development agenda. This Lassoie, 2017; Murton & Lord, 2020), have led to the emergence of included the objective to graduate from a LDC (Least Developed Coun­ major conflicts and have fueled community resistance across the coun­ try) to a middle-income country by 2030 along the lines of the Sus­ try. This not only confirms that urban infrastructures increasingly tainable Development Goals (SDGs) (MoFA, 2019). constitute a site of intense contestation, conflict and violence (Bouzar­ The transplantation of new or speculative infrastructures is not, ovski et al., 2015; Zheng et al., 2021). It also shows that spatial visions, therefore, simply a matter of a spatial takeover of the present and the territorial plans and infrastructural myths, like those that guide the New future and this is perhaps where the notion of BRI infrastructural myths Silk Road and national politics in Nepal, when they have as their pri­ takes its more specific denotation in Nepal. In a disaster’s aftermath, mary goal to render territories accessible within global production and pressing questions arise about “which futures to claim” and “which pasts trade networks will most probably prioritize the creation of infra­ to rebuild”, and the outcome is “hardly ever a return to the past” since structural hubs and free industrial zones that do not serve the needs of the future will be crafted “within the constraints and possibilities that communities and Indigenous peoples (Enns & Bersaglio, 2020; Lesutis, unfold in the disaster’s wake” (Hutt et al., 2021, p. 4). In Nepal, in the 2020) but create and intensify uneven vulnerabilities. era following the earthquakes, BRI infrastructure projects have been Importantly, BRI’s unfolding in Nepal denotes much more than the intertwined with governmental visions leading to efforts to fast-track emergence of another controversial infrastructural myth in the endless urban development and to re-script the past by treating places of (re) quest for bikas. As Katz (2015, 299) explains, “the sedimentations of building as empty of previous life and history. This became particularly place are not just what’s in place, but also our fleeting encounters with evident in the case of Durbar Square and historical settlements like what’s there and what’s missing, what was, what wasn’t, what we Khokana, but also in the Chinese contractors’ demands to “clear” all imagined, what we dreamed, what we once found and what we have signs of human presence before starting new construction. Erasing the lost, what we hoped to find, what we excavated and what we buried. past of Nepal is directly related to hegemonic aspirations for its future: it Geography, like history, is not fixed but drawn forth and made and denotes an attempt to legitimize a particular urban vision of remade every day”. For one of us, going back to Kathmandu for field­ multi-lateral urban development for the benefit of the poor. But given work brought in mind Katz’s evocation that “it was our taken for granted that this vision is not part of people’s collective cultural memory, it world” (ibid, 304). The invocation of Nepal as a state impervious to leaves them struggling to make sense of the diverse interests and foreign imposition was a common refrain in our school curriculums, and agendas of “those who had come from elsewhere to use the moment of a source of national pride and Nepalese exceptionalism, particularly in shock to profit and to change the order of things” (Simpson, 2014, p. 1; comparison to the violent colonial history of India under British rule. see also; Campbell, 2018). Despite the author’s critical gaze towards state propaganda, this idea of In his study near the Nepal-China Border, Campbell (2010, 276) a distinct Nepali essence seems to have subconsciously mutated into a eloquently demonstrates that “it is an old rhetoric of modernization that powerful way to observe the continuity of daily life in the country. thinks a rural and ethnically marginal population can be brought into This static state was exorcised by the clash of unfamiliar languages modern economic ways and opportunities through simply providing and flags, the retreat of old buildings, the acquisition of Indigenous land, infrastructural connection[s]”. In Nepal, the justifications for and the excavation of buried ground to construct new monuments, Chinese-funded projects and the discourses surrounding BRI infra­ roads, and cities that shattered the fortress of the collectively imagined structural realities and myths even though do not deviate substantially world for someone born and raised in Nepal. In infusing (and confusing) from this line of reasoning, they also indicate a quite distinct role for “thoughts and speculations with quotations, fragmentary thoughts, im­ promising BRI urban futures. The myth of Naya urban Nepal shows this ages, the drift of other temporalities, and the restless clashing spatialities well: it envisions the full realisation of long-standing national myths of dreams, fantasy and encounter” (ibid, 301), it became possible to re- along with emerging BRI myths of transnational connectivity, unlimited emerge out of the caverns of disbelief and recognize how a new socio- urban growth and foreign capital investment that will follow from the spatial and political vision is formed, fighting to become hegemonic unconditional inclusion to a globalised economy, all ideas that are by those who have the power, and reacted upon by those who are strongly attached to the rhetoric of the New Silk Road. Naya Nepal unfolding their memories and merging stories into a collective narrative promises, therefore, a prosperous future which will emerge out of the not only of the present and the future but also of the past. Talking with ashes of the old, least-developed, landlocked, rural Nepal. Crucially, shopkeepers, activists, laborers, and civil servants allowed us to recode despite the powerful effect of orchestrated efforts to colour these the social construction of spaces, places and socionatures, the material infrastructural myths under the pledge to “modernise” a “poor” country and discursive social and cultural practices through which a new and a rural society, both the Nepali and Chinese states have not managed “urban” is constructed in “Naya” Nepal. It unraveled the complex ways to fully dispel criticisms about the violent, material consequences of geopolitical/geoeconomic interests struggle to render hegemonic a sin­ their actions. Indeed, framing the social, cultural and environmental gular, urban development vision foreclosing alternative visions of sus­ destruction as an inevitable price for progress rather than as something tainability, rejuvenation and prosperity (Karrar & Mostowlansky, 2020; that could be resisted, avoided or be done differently has been actively Szadziewski, 2020). Post-disaster reform programmes to “Build Back challenged by a significant part of Nepali people. The new urban Nepal Better” (Regmi, 2016) and reconstruction projects made external that is emerging from the ruins of the past is thus contested and un­ geo-economic forces decisive in restructuring Nepal’s political economy certain, a far cry from the days of the Panchayat regime and the civil (Chand, 2017; Paudel & Le Billon, 2020) and marked a new era char­ war, when such gargantuan projects were rarely challenged by Nepali acterised by the advanced role of China. people. Taken together, the infrastructural myths and the actual commit­ As Oakes (2020) writes, destructed urban landscapes become places ments of the post-2015 era, along with the BRI’s material manifestation of contestation over history and memory with people living in a “sense within an organized transnational political plan, are clear indications of suspension” between what was there before and what is expected to that China’s interventions in Nepal are radically different from the come. Naya urban Nepal is struggling to emerge within a country where piecemeal development projects that it previously transplanted across the lines between places designated as urban and those designated as the country. Whereas previous physical infrastructure projects were rural are blurred, with the former never providing essential, life 10 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 supporting urban infrastructures and the latter never been massively Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2015). Towards a new epistemology of the urban? City, 19, 151–182. depopulated. This is a key element of the unique trajectory of Silk Road Campbell, B. (2010). Rhetorical routes for development: A road project in Nepal. urbanization in Nepal: an ultimate path to reach a long due Contemporary South Asia, 18, 267–279. rural-to-urban transition that is inextricably linked with decades of Campbell, B. (2018). Communities in the aftermath of Nepal’s earthquake. In Evolving infrastructural violence and precarity and that is strongly shaped by narratives of hazard and risk (pp. 109–123). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Chand, B. (2017). Disaster relief as a political tool: Analyzing Indian and Chinese people’s struggles against the unequal geographies of BRI-driven urban responses after the Nepal earthquakes. Strategic Analysis, 41(6), 535–545. transformation. The distinctiveness of Silk Road urbanization in Nepal Chinese Government. (2015). Visions and actions on jointly building the silk road economic reiterates the significance of conducting research that does not un­ Belt and 21st century maritime silk road. Available at: http://2017.beltandroadforum. org/english/n100/2017/0410/c22-45.html. equivocally reproduce western notions of urbanization and does not Christophers, B. (2011). Revisiting the urbanization of capital. Annals of the Association of imagine urban futures shaped only by Northern dominance and imagi­ American Geographers, 101(6), 1347–1364. nation. Research on the various places where BRI projects materialize Danyluk, M. (2018). Capital’s logistical fix: Accumulation, globalization, and the survival of capitalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(4), 630–647. offers such a unique opportunity to provincialize urban knowledge and Datta, A., & Ahmed, N. (2020). Intimate infrastructures: The rubrics of gendered safety develop postcolonial urban theory (Lawhon et al., 2016) that would be and urban violence in Kerala, India. Geoforum, 110, 67–76. attentive to the transforming global geographies of the urban in which David, E. (2008). Cultural trauma, memory, and gendered collective action: The case of women of the storm following Hurricane Katrina. NSWA Journal, 20, 138–162. China’s geopolitical and geoeconomics power becomes critical. Pro­ Derudder, B., Romain, J., Xingjian, L., & Kunaka, C. (2018). Connectivity along overland posing the New Silk Road as a generative site of theory building requires corridors of the belt and road initiative. Washington: World Bank Group. scholarly attention to diverse place-based histories, relational multi­ Enns, C., & Bersaglio, B. (2020). On the coloniality of “new” mega-infrastructure projects in East Africa. Antipode, 52(1), 101–123. plicities and the situatedness of theory building and has the potential to Ferdinand, P. (2016). Westward ho-the China dream and ‘one belt, one road’: Chinese show that any theorisation of the urban is empirically determined and foreign policy under Xi Jinping. International Affairs, 92(4), 941–957. historically located in conditions of ongoing emergence and thus un­ Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2022). Splintering urbanism at 20 and the “infrastructural certain and contestable (Robinson, 2021; Robinson & Roy, 2016). This turn”. Journal of Urban Technology. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 10630732.2021.2005934 shifts research focus on the complexities and the uneven and uncertain Graham, S., & McFarlane, C. (Eds.). (2015). Infrastructural lives. Urban infrastructure in spatialities of the urban allowing novel concepts and typologies of ur­ context. London and New York: Routledge. banization to emerge that may disrupt established notions of the urban Han, X., & Webber, M. (2020). From Chinese dam building in Africa to the Belt and Road Initiative: Assembling infrastructure projects and their linkages. Political Geography, and even render existing theories obsolete to ensure 21st century 77, Article 102102. relevance. Harvey, D. (1985). The urbanization of capital: Studies in the history and theory of capitalist urbanization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harvey, D. (2016). The ways of the world. Oxford University Press. Declaration of competing interest Harvey, P., & Knox, H. (2015). Roads: An anthropology of infrastructure and expertise. Ithaca, NY & London, UK: Cornell University Press. No conflict of interest. Hildyard, N., & Sol, X. (2017). How infrastructure is shaping the world: A critical introduction to infrastructure mega-corridors. Brussels: Counter Balance. Hsing, Y. T. (2010). The great urban transformation: Politics of land and property in China. Acknowledgements Oxford University Press. Hutt, M., Liechty, M., & Lotter, S. (2021). Epicentre to aftermath: Rebuilding and remembering in the wake of Nepal’s earthquakes. Cambridge University Press. This study has been supported by a philanthropic gift from the Equal IOM. (2016). Nepal: Thousands remain displaced from earthquake, exposed to impact of Opportunities Foundation, a Cambridge Humanities Research Grants coming monsoon season. UN Migration. Scheme (GASR010852) and a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship (RYC2020- Joniak-Lüthi, A. (2020). A road, a disappearing river and fragile connectivity in Sino- Inner Asian borderlands. Political Geography, 78, Article 102122. 028925-I/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) all awarded to Dr. Apostolo­ Kaika, M., & Swyngedouw, E. (2005). Fetishizing the modern city (from international poulou. We would like to thank all the interviewees for their valuable journal of urban and regional research 2000). In N. R. Fyfe, & J. T. Kenny (Eds.), The contribution to this research as well as the reviewers and the editor for urban geography reader (pp. 343–352). London and New York: Routledge. Karrar, H. H., & Mostowlansky, T. (2020). The Belt and Road as political technology. their very constructive comments. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 38(5), 834–839. Katz, C. (2015). A bronx chronicle. In H. Merrill, & L. M. Hoffman (Eds.), Spaces of References danger: Culture and power in the everyday (pp. 299–310). Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Katz, C. (2021). Splanetary urbanization. International Journal of Urban and Regional ADB (Asian Development Bank). (2010). Unleashing economic growth: Region-based urban Research, 45, 597–611. development strategy for Nepal. Philippines: ADB. Klinger, J. M. (2020). Environmental, development, and security politics in the Adhikari, A. (2014). The bullet and the ballot box: The story of Nepal’s Maoist revolution. production of Belt and Road spaces. Territory, Politics, Governance, 8, 657–675. Verso Books. Larkin, B. (2008). Signal and noise: Infrastructure, and urban culture in Nigeria. Durham: Apostolopoulou, E. (2020). Nature swapped and nature lost: Biodiversity offsetting, Duke University Press. urbanization and social justice. Switzerland: Springer-Palgrave. Lawhon, M., Silver, J., Ernstson, H., & Pierce, J. (2016). Unlearning (un)located ideas in Apostolopoulou, E. (2021a). Tracing the links between infrastructure-led development, the provincialization of urban theory. Regional Studies, 50(9), 1611–1622. urban transformation, and inequality in China’s belt and road initiative. Antipode, 53 Lefebvre, H. (1970). La révolution urbaine. Paris: Gallimard. (3), 831–858. Lefebvre, H. (1995). Notes on the new town (April 1960). In Introduction to modernity Apostolopoulou, E. (2021b). A novel geographical research agenda on Silk Road twelve preludes september 1959-may 1960 (pp. 122–124). London and New York: urbanisation. The Geographical Journal, 187, 386–393. Verso. Apostolopoulou, E. (2021c). How China’s Belt and Road Initiative is changing cities – Lefebvre, H. (2003). The urban revolution. Minneapolis & London: University of and threatening communities. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/h Minnesota Press. ow-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-is-changing-cities-and-threatening-communities- Lesutis, G. (2020). How to understand a development corridor? Area, 52(3), 600–608. 153515. Linder, B. (2019). This looks like Chinatown!”: Contested geographies and the Apostolopoulou, E., Cheng, H., Silver, J., & Wiig, A. (2022). Cities on the new Silk road: transformation of social space in Jyatha, kathmandu. City and Society, 31, 164–187. The global urban geographies of China’s belt and road initiative. Area Development and Linlin, L., Huadong, G., & Pesaresi, M. (2017). Remote sensing of urbanization dynamics Policy (in press). along the Belt and Road. Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32(1), 74–81. Beazley, R., & Lassoie, J. P. (2017). Himalayan mobilities: An exploration of the impact of de LT Oliveira, G., Murton, G., Rippa, A., Harlan, T., & Yang, Y. (2020). China’s belt and expanding rural road networks on social and ecological systems in the Nepalese Himalaya. road initiative: Views from the ground. Political Geography, 82, Article 102225. New York: Springer. Malagodi, M. (2018). The rejection of constitutional Incrementalism in Nepal’s Bhushal, R. (2019). Nepal-China railway project: Fantasy or reality? The Third Pole. federalisation. Federal Law Review, 46(4), 521–540. Available at: https://www.thethirdpole.net/en/nature/nepal-china-railway/. Manchanda, R. (2008). Waiting for ‘Naya’ Nepal. Economic and Political Weekly, 23–26. Blanchard, J.-M. F., & Flint, C. (2017). The geopolitics of China’s maritime Silk Road Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. initiative. Geopolitics, 22, 223–245. Mayer, M., & Zhang, X. (2020). Theorizing China-world integration: Sociospatial Bouzarovski, S., Bradshaw, M., & Wochnik, A. (2015). Making territory through reconfigurations and the modern silk roads. Review of International Political Economy. infrastructure: The governance of natural gas transit in Europe. Geoforum, 64, https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2020.1741424 217–228. Brenner, N., & Katsikis, N. (2020). Operational landscapes: Hinterlands of the capitalocene. Architectural Design, 90(1), 22–31. 11 E. Apostolopoulou and H. Pant Political Geography 98 (2022) 102704 McKinnon, S., Gorman-Murray, A., & Dominey-Howes, D. (2016). ‘The greatest loss was Robinson, J., & Roy, A. (2016). Debate on global urbanisms and the nature of urban a loss of our history’: Natural disasters, marginalised identities and sites of memory. theory. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 40(1), 181–186. Social & Cultural Geography, 17(8), 1120–1139. Rodgers, D., & O’Neill, B. (2012). Infrastructural violence: Introduction to the special MoFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Nepal). (2019). Joint Statement between Nepal and the issue. Ethnography, 13(4), 401–412. People’s Republic of China. Available at: https://mofa.gov.np/joint-statement-betwee Schindler, S., & Kanai, J. M. (2021). Getting the territory right: Infrastructure-led n-nepal-and-the-peoples-republic-of-china-2/. development and the re-emergence of spatial planning strategies. Regional Studies, MoUD. (2017). National urban development strategy. Government of Nepal, Ministry of 51, 40–51. Urban Development (MoUD). Shrestha, N. (1995). Becoming a development category. In J. Crush (Ed.), Power of Murton, G., & Lord, A. (2020). Trans-Himalayan power corridors: Infrastructural politics development (pp. 259–270). Routledge. and China’s belt and road initiative in Nepal. Political Geography, 77, Article 102100. Sidaway, J. D., Rowedder, S. C., Woon, C. Y., Lin, W., & Pholsena, V. (2020). Murton, G., Lord, A., & Beazley, R. (2016). ‘A handshake across the Himalayas’: Chinese Introduction: Research agendas raised by the belt and road initiative. Environment investment, hydropower development, and state formation in Nepal. Eurasian and Planning C: Politics and Space, 38(5), 795–802. Geography and Economics, 57, 403–432. Sidaway, J. D., & Woon, C. Y. (2017). Chinese narratives on “One Belt, One Road” in Nayak, N. (2018). Nepal-China transit agreement: An evaluation. Manohar Parrikar geopolitical and imperial contexts. The Professional Geographer, 69(4), 591–603. Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Simpson, E. (2014). The political biography of an earthquake: Aftermath and amnesia in Nightingale, A. J., Bhattarai, A., Ojha, H. R., Sigdel, T. S., & Rankin, K. N. (2018). Gujarat. India: Oxford University Press. Fragmented public authority and state un/making in the “New” Republic of Nepal. Smith, N. (1996). New urban frontier. London and New York: Routledge. Modern Asian Studies, 52, 849–882. Smith, N. (2010). Uneven development: Nature, capital, and the production of space. Athens Oakes, T. (2020). Not urban yet, no longer rural. In M. Bonino, F. Carota, F. Governa, & & London: University of Georgia Press. S. Pellecchia (Eds.), China goes urban: The city to come (pp. 198–209). Milan: Skira. Smith, N. (2022). Continental metropolitanization: Chongqing and the urban origins of Olinga-Shannon, S., Barbesgaard, M., & Vervest, P. (2019). The belt and road initiative China’s belt and road initiative. Urban Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/ (BRI): An AEPF framing paper. Asia Europe People’s Forum. 02723638.2021.2014670 Paudel, D., & Le Billon, P. (2020). Geo-logics of power: Disaster capitalism, himalayan Summers, T. (2016). China’s ‘new silk roads’: Sub-national regions and networks of materialities, and the geopolitical economy of reconstruction in post-earthquake global political economy. Third World Quarterly, 37(9), 1628–1643. Nepal. Geopolitics, 25, 838–866. Szadziewski, H. (2020). Converging anticipatory geographies in Oceania: The belt and Pigg, S. L. (1992). Inventing social categories through place: Social representations and road initiative and look North in Fiji. Political Geography, 77, Article 102119. development in Nepal. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34(3), 491–513. Thapa, B. B. (1992). Nepal in 1991: A consolidation of democratic pluralism. Asian Pigg, S. L. (1993). Unintended consequences: The ideological impact of development in Survey, 32(2), 175–183. Nepal. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 13, 45–58. Thapa, R. B., Murayama, Y., & Ale, S. (2008). Kathmandu. Cities, 25(1), 45–57. Pradhan, B., Sharma, P., & Pradhan, P. K. (2020). Urban growth and environment and Tooze, A. (2018). How a decade of financial crises changed the world. New York: Allen health hazards in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. In R. Singh, B. Srinagesh, & S. Anand Lane. (Eds.), Urban health risk and resilience in asian cities. Singapore: Springer. TRIAL International. (2017). Impunity in Nepal: Alternative report to human rights Rankin, K. N., Nightingale, A. J., Hamal, P., & Sigdel, T. S. (2018). Roads of change: committee. Available at: https://trialinternational.org/latest-post/impunity-in-nepa Political transition and state formation in Nepal’s agrarian districts. Journal of l-alternative-report-to-human-rights-committee/. Peasant Studies, 45, 280–299. UNDESA. (2014). World urbanization prospects: The 2014 revision. United Nations Regmi, K. D. (2016). The political economy of 2015 Nepal earthquake: Some critical Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. reflections. Asian Geographer, 33, 77–96. Watson, I. (2017). Resilience and disaster risk reduction: Reclassifying diversity and Regmi, K. D. (2017). World Bank in Nepal’s education: Three decades of neoliberal national identity in post-earthquake Nepal. Third World Quarterly, 38(2), 483–504. reform. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 15(2), 188–201. Wiig, A., & Silver, J. (2019). Turbulent presents, precarious futures: Urbanization and the Rest, M. (2012). Generating power: Debates on development around the Nepalese arun-3 deployment of global infrastructure. Regional Studies, 53(6), 912–923. hydropower project. Contemporary South Asia, 20, 105–117. Williams, J., Robinson, C., & Bouzarovski, S. (2020). China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Rest, M. (2019). Dreaming of pipes: Kathmandu’s long-delayed melamchi water supply the emerging geographies of global urbanisation. The Geographical Journal, 186(1), project. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 37(7), 1198–1216. 128–140. Robinson, J. (2021). Comparative urbanism and global urban studies. In M. Lancione, & Zheng, H. W., Bouzarovski, S., Knuth, S., Panteli, M., Schindler, S., Ward, K., & C. McFarlane (Eds.), Global urbanism: Knowledge, power and the city. Oxon & New Williams, J. (2021). Interrogating China’s global urban presence. Geopolitics. https:// York: Routledge. doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2021.1901084 12