China’s similar hardball approach in dealing with troubled debtors led some to believe that Beijing was guided by “debt trap” or “strategic trap” diplomacy. The strategic Hambantota port of Sri Lanka, handed over to a Chinese company on a 99-year lease over failing to repay loans, became a poster case of the challenges associated with BRI projects. The BRI loan component with relatively high-interest rates with a shorter payback period, the imprudent lending pattern, cases of corruption and irregularities, and China’s hardball approach to troubled debtors met with criticisms. Its lending spree slowed in 2018, and the initiative also got embroiled in endless controversies. China, however, failed to sustain the initial momentum. The prospects of connectivity and trade links with China-an emerging superpower which had experienced unprecedented economic growth for decades-were of interest to many. President Xi’s announcement of the BRI, then One Belt, One Road (OBOR), was met with enthusiasm across regions, barring the US-led West. There have been a few other developments over the years, but neither has a project undergone the construction phase nor have any provisions been implemented. A month back, China sent an expert team to initiate the feasibility study of the Kathmandu-Kerung railway-a project under the BRI. China seems eager to portray BRI’s success story in Nepal, but the Nepal-China BRI agreement, signed in 2017, has remained in limbo ever since. The PIA was surely constructed by a Chinese company with a loan from the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM Bank), but the project doesn’t fall under the nine BRI projects proposed by Nepal. On December 31, just a day before the inauguration of the Pokhara International Airport (PIA), the Chinese Embassy in Nepal claimed the PIA to be a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
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