After a long eighteen-year gap, Nepal and China are all set to hold boundary talks in Beijing next week. The meeting comes days ahead of the Nepal-China foreign secretary-level talks slated for June 25.

Amrit Rai, foreign ministry spokesman, said the Joint Expert Group meeting next week will be led by the Director General of the Department of Survey. The meeting will take place on June 19 and 20 in Beijing.

The Nepali delegation will include representatives from ministries including foreign affairs, home affairs, defence, and land management, cooperatives and poverty alleviation, as well as the Nepali Embassy in Beijing.

According to Rai, the delegation led by Prakash Joshi, director general of the Department of Survey, will head for Beijing on Sunday.

The Chinese team will be led by someone from the Department of Border and Ocean Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.

The last meeting of the Joint Expert Group was held in 2006 in Kathmandu. The mechanism mandates a joint inspection of the Nepal-China border, dispute resolution, and finalisation of the fourth protocol to be signed by the two sides. The third Nepal-China boundary protocol was signed in 1988.

According to multiple officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, the meeting is expected to discuss the status of the Nepal-China boundary; the date for commencing a joint boundary inspection; disputes in Nepal-China border; and also the signing of the Border Management System, whose initial agreement was signed during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019.

The Chinese side has sent a copy of the border management agreement, which is now under the review of the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, according to a joint secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

According to a senior official familiar with the matter, although the text of the Boundary Management System is yet to be released, it envisions forming two panels—a joint commission on boundary matters between Nepal and China, and a committee of boundary representatives to be led by competent authorities from the two countries.

Nepal is yet to ratify the boundary management system.

The joint secretary said the meeting will also discuss some outstanding issues, such as the timing and form of inspection, and whether it should start anew or resume from where it was left in 2006.

“We should start a new joint inspection as a lot has changed on the ground,” Krishna Raj BC, former director general of the Department of Survey, told the Post.

When BC was director general at the department in 2011, Nepal and China were all set to sign the fourth boundary protocol by addressing issues like the height of Mt Everest and the exact location of pillar number 57 in Dolakha district, among other things. But the government called off the meeting at the last moment, and the plan to sign the fourth boundary protocol stalled.

Nepal and China concluded their first boundary talks in 1961 and signed the Boundary Protocol in 1963.

The 1963 Joint Boundary Protocol has the provision of constituting three different mechanisms to deal with boundary issues—the Joint Inspection Team, Joint Expert Group, and Joint Inspection Committee. The mechanisms were enshrined in the Nepal-China Boundary Protocol signed between the two countries on January 20, 1963. Later Nepal and China renewed the Boundary Protocol in 1979 and 1988.

While the Joint Expert Group is led by the director general of the Department of Survey from the Nepali side and their Chinese counterpart, the Joint Inspection Committee is led by the deputy director general or under secretary from the Department of Survey and their Chinese counterpart, as per the practice and provisions. Similarly, the joint inspection committee is led by the joint secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“If we are going to hold the meeting after such a long time, we should start afresh,” said BC, who later became a government secretary. “We should shun the old position as we will sign the new protocol after jointly conducting a fresh inspection of the boundary.”

BC also led the joint boundary inspection between Nepal and China, completed the task and was to leave for Xian, China, for the meeting, which was later called off by the Nepali side.

One of the major boundary disputes between was over the height of Mt Everest, which was resolved in 2020 with the two sides jointly announcing the new height as 8,848.86 metres. But several other issues remain unresolved.

Two officials from two different ministries said the Chinese side has been asking for homework time before conducting the joint boundary inspection, but the Nepali side has been insisting on resuming it promptly, arguing that no additional homework is needed.

Officials from the foreign and land management ministries said the Chinese side is trying to tie up the boundary meeting, joint boundary inspection, and signing of the boundary protocol with the signing of the boundary management system, something which the Nepali side has long stalled.

Chinese security personnel have numerous border outposts and have been actively patrolling the Nepal-China border and this makes it easier for them to conduct joint inspections, the officials said. Nepal has fewer border outposts compared to Chinese, but Nepal is still prepared for joint inspection, they said.

“We should address both old and new boundary issues during the meeting, like those related to joint inspection and signing of boundary protocol. As far as I know, there were two unresolved points during our last meeting. If we are unable to resolve the disputed issues, they will be recorded in minutes and included in the protocol,” said BC.

As per the boundary protocol, Nepal and China should conduct a joint boundary inspection every ten years and sign the updated protocol, but that has not happened.

“That is why the Nepali side has been insisting on a joint inspection,” said a joint secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

We have several reports from the fields provided by the Armed Police Force (APF), said an under secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Likewise, A joint secretary at the Ministry of Land Management told the Post that joint inspection of the Nepal and China boundary is one of the toughest tasks.

“This is due to the difficult geographical terrain, freezing cold, lack of infrastructure like roads and treacherous mountains where the surveyors need to climb up to 5,000 metres for measurements. These factors make joint inspection complicated and time-consuming. The work may take up to a year,” he said

Another former official of the Department of Survey told the Post that on the Chinese side, there are fully-equipped border outposts every five kilometres along most stretches of the border, “but on our side, boundary inspection has never been the priority. The government does not allocate enough budget to protect and safeguard the border, be it north or south.”

Back in July 2022, officials from Nepal and China had held a virtual talk where they decided to activate the existing boundary mechanisms through mutual consultation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on July 15, 2022.

According to officials and experts, Nepal and China have a dispute over pillar number 57 in Dolakha district, which was a major bone of contention following the resolution of the height of Mt Everest in December 2020.

Besides pillar no 57, disputes have often surfaced in Humla, Gorkha, and Kimathanka (Sankhuwasabha), which need to be resolved through joint inspection.

In addition to resolving disputes, as per the boundary protocol, both sides should update the boundary status every 10 years.

The Nepali side, during the official visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is also the State Councilor of China, in March 2022, had proposed forming a mechanism in order to conduct joint inspection of the border and update the latest status. The Nepal-China border spans 1,439 kilometres.

Toya Baral, who led the 2006 meeting of the Joint Expert Group in Kathmandu, recalled, “The 2006 meeting prepared the boundary map using the global positioning system. As far as I remember, there has been no such meeting between Nepal and China.”

“After meeting with the Chinese, we conducted a joint inspection and prepared a digital map,” said Baral. “The mechanism was also tasked with repair and maintenance of boundary pillars.”

“We had almost finalised the boundary works besides settling the height of Mt Everet, and resolving the dispute over marker no 57. Some damaged pillars were also repaired. The map was digitalised, and we were tasked with finding the old boundary maps and evidence to ensure accurate positioning,” said Baral.

Despite Nepal government’s claims that the Nepal-China border is largely free from disputes, there are reports of several boundary-related issues like encroachment, fencing and wiring, illegal construction, missing border pillars, lack of maintenance of boundary markers, and use of high-level digital surveillances in the border by the Chinese side. Nepali security agencies deployed on the border reported these issues to the Ministry of Home Affairs.

In October 2021, a panel led by joint secretary Jay Narayan Acharya of the Ministry of Home Affairs submitted a report to the ministry after inspecting the boundary status in Humla district and made several recommendations. The report called for jointly addressing boundary matters and issues with China. “There has been a practice of addressing such issues through Joint Inspection Team, Joint Expert Group and Joint Inspection Committee,” says the report. “That’s why there is a need to activate these mechanisms.”

“Such sensitive and bilateral matters related to the border need to be addressed through a permanent mechanism, but it is found that no such initiative has been taken,” states the report.

Boundary issues with China surface in Nepal occasionally, and different governments have treated the matter differently. After media reports in September 2020 said China was “illegally constructing nine buildings inside the Nepali territory,” then foreign minister Pradip Gyawali swiftly refuted these claims.

The Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu also denied any boundary issues between Nepal and China.