July 16, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 5, 1423

BEIJING: The king of Nepal, travelling across China on a 10- day goodwill tour, has won a curious promise from China’s Communist leaders: to support his government’s struggle against rebels who champion the ideas of Mao Zedong.

Beijing’s willingness to back the king is another reminder of how much China has changed since the days when it supported insurgencies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere and when its founding father, Mao, urged what he called the oppressed peoples of the world to “dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave.”

The Chinese government still glorifies Mao, and his writings remain required reading for many students. But China’s new leaders, students of capitalism as much as socialism, have little use for his theories of peasant revolution or for the Maoist guerrillas in Nepal fighting to replace a constitutional monarchy with a one-party Communist state of the type Mao set up here in 1949.

Instead, the Chinese government is worried about maintaining the stability of an impoverished nation that shares a long border with Tibet and could serve as a base for Tibetan exiles seeking to shake off Chinese rule.

“China supports the efforts of King Gyanendra and the Nepali government in cracking down on armed anti-government forces,” state media quoted Chinese President Jiang Zemin as saying after his meeting with the king on Wednesday.

In turn, the king assured Jiang that Nepal would never let its territory be used as “venues for any activity undermining China’s interests,” the official New China News Agency reported.

In separate meetings with the king, Jiang and three of China’s other top leaders condemned the Maoist rebels in Nepal as terrorists and pledged “political and moral support” for his government’s efforts to crush them, said Rajeshwar Acharya, Nepal’s ambassador to China.

Acharya said China also signed an agreement promising $10 million in economic aid to Nepal this year, about what it has provided annually for the past few years. In addition, China pledged last November to provide communications equipment that would allow the Nepalese army to operate more easily in mountainous terrain, he said. Acharya said the king did not ask for additional assistance.

The Maoists are said to control a quarter to a half of Nepal’s territory.

When Mao was alive, the Chinese government often backed rebels like those in Nepal, or at least refrained from condemning them publicly, Chinese scholars said.

But after his death in 1976, China began withdrawing its support for international revolution. It now preaches rigorous non-interference in the affairs of other nations.

Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said China has never supported the Maoists in Nepal. He condemned the rebels for soiling the memory of Mao. “The armed anti-government forces in Nepal usurped the name of Chinese leader Mao Zedong,” he said.

Nepal is important to China because of its strategic location south of Tibet. Many Nepalese are Himalayan people ethnically similar to Tibetans, and about 35,000 Tibetan refugees live there. As many as 2,500 more make the dangerous journey into the country every year. Most oppose Chinese rule of Tibet and support the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who lives in exile in India.

The Nepalese government prohibits Tibetans from engaging in any political activities that could anger China.

As part of the ‘war on terrorism’, the Bush administration has asked Congress for $20 million in military aid to help Nepal’s government fight the Maoists.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.