Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is hitting his stride in diplomatic engagements as he plans to visit India and China in September and meet top leaders of Nepal’s immediate neighbours. This will be Oli’s second visit to China since becoming prime minister in July last year. Oli went on an official visit to China last year from December 2 to 5.

Oli’s four-day visit to China comes just ahead of his party’s policy convention, which kicks off on September 5, at a time when he faces an intense power struggle with former President Bidya Devi Bhandari. Bhandari has been challenging Oli’s continuous ‘ownership’ of the party and trying to unseat him from leadership.

Ahead of his scheduled India visit on September 16, Oli is going to China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin, from August 31 to September 1.

Nepal is a dialogue partner in the SCO and has long been requesting for observer status in the regional bloc. But this process has been blocked due to reservations from some member states.

The SCO, established on June 15, 2001, has 10 member states, two observers, and 14 dialogue partners including Nepal. Normally, representatives from dialogue partners are not invited to the SCO summit, which is also known as the Heads of State Council summit.

This time, however, Nepal is on the guest list, so Oli is visiting China, said an official at the prime minister’s office. Oli is likely to address one of the side events in the SCO summit as a distinguished speaker.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is making preparations for the prime ministers’ participation in the SCO summit, ministry spokesperson Lok Bahadur Poudel Chettri told the Post.

Initially, when the invitation was sent to Nepal some one month ago, Nepal had communicated to the Chinese side that President Ramchandra Paudel might attend the summit as well as the commemoration of the 80th Victory Day Parade in Beijing.

The parade, scheduled for September 3, marks the end of the second Sino-Japanese war and Second World War, with a series of ceremonial events including a military parade.

But President Paudel declined to attend the victory parade as he was awarded the ‘Order of the Rising Sun’ by the Japanese government in 2022, making his attendance in an ‘anti-Japan event’ diplomatically sensitive, a knowledgeable source at the foreign ministry told the Post. “Then we had to cancel Paudel’s visit.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also advised the President’s Office that the President would be better suited for a state visit than the SCO summit.

Initially, the government considered sending Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bishnu Poudel to the SCO summit, but Beijing indicated that its senior leadership expected a prime minister-level delegation from Nepal.

The decision on Oli’s attendance at the SCO summit was taken only on Wednesday evening, and accordingly the foreign ministry and Nepali Embassy in Beijing were instructed to begin preparations, said the official at the prime minister’s office.

“Oli is expected to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and other leaders at the SCO summit, although specific engagements have yet to be worked out,” said the official.

Oli is likely to address the summit as a distinguished speaker and advocate for Nepal’s observer status in the SCO. As per preliminary information, Oli may meet Chinese President Xi on September 3, and will attend a lunch hosted by Xi the same day before returning to Kathmandu.

Whether Oli will observe the victory parade in Beijing, which is scheduled for September 3, remains uncertain.

As the policy convention of the CPN-UML is slated for September 5, the prime minister has a very tight schedule, which requires him to travel to Beijing from Tianjin and return to Kathmandu in time for the convention, said a leader close to Oli.

The visit and related engagements of the prime minister are still in the preparatory phase, the leader told the Post.