Ahead of the China visit of Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the International Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party has invited a high-level delegation from CPN-UML, the second largest party in Parliament.

Prime Minister Dahal is scheduled to visit China from September 22 after completing his engagements in the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Leading a 19-member delegation, UML Secretary General Shankar Pokharel is visiting China from September 3 to 15, Bishnu Rijal, a central committee member of the party, told the Post.

Earlier in May, a CPN (Maoist Centre) delegation visited various Chinese provinces and held talks with Chinese leaders. The delegation was led by former Speaker and party’s vice-chairman Agni Prasad Sapkota.

The UML delegation will depart for the Chinese city of Guangzhou on Sunday and will visit some provinces before reaching Beijing, where it will meet senior CPC leaders. “The visit is in the nascent phase, so it will take some days to clear who we will meet and where we will visit,” Rajan Bhattarai, head of UML’s foreign relations department, said.

Bhattarai, head of the organisation department Kashi Nath Adhikari, head of publicity department Rajendra Gautam and seven party leaders from each province, four leaders of the UML’s sister organisations including youth, women, student, labour associations will accompany Pokhrel in the China visit, said Rijal.

The visit is part of the agreement signed between the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) and the CPC (Communist Party of China) in 2019, said Rijal. The now-dissolved Nepal Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party had reached an agreement in 2019 that both sides will carry out various training and exchange programmes in the future. The agreement between the two communist parties was signed in Kathmandu on September 24, 2019, just ahead of the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Nepal. Then Nepal Communist Party’s Foreign Affairs chief Madhav Kumar Nepal and chief of the International Liaison Department of the CPC Song Tao signed the MoU on the establishment of fraternal relations between the two parties of the neighbouring nations. The MoU states that both parties will exchange high-level visits, will share the communist ideology and experiences, give continuity to the ideological training that is being conducted at present, extend the training to lower levels, and share experiences regarding the development models of the two countries.

Likewise, CPN (Maoist Centre) Secretary General Dev Gurung also visited China on August 10. “Most of these visits are study tours and there are very few political components,” Gurung said. “When two friends meet, we definitely discuss political matters but it depends on the objectives of the visit.”

Visits from Chinese officials in the communist party and the government are also taking place one after another. After China lifted all kinds of Covid restrictions from January, over one dozen CPC delegations, including a military one, and senior Chinese officials have visited Nepal.