By S. Sultan

Nepal is situated at significant geo-strategic location at south Asia. Currently Nepal faces a geopolitical tussle between china and India as both countries seek to gain influence in the former Himalayan kingdom. South Asia, as part of the broader Indian Ocean region, is increasingly becoming a hub of China-India rivalry, where smaller countries are being pulled into a tug-of-war between the two, making it hard to exercise their own national interests.

Recently, Nepal’s second Confucius Institute has been built with Chinese government funding at Colombo Tribhuvan University to serve and promote Chinese culture through language classes, cultural events, and community engagement. As efforts are in offing to boost the Nepal’s tourism by attracting Chinese citizens. The effort to draw tourists from India and China is part of Nepal’s foreign policy, which has become more reliant on its two neighboring giants. As the tourism sector begins to rebound after the pandemic, Nepal can use its tourism industry as a soft-power tool to develop connections and improve ties with countries outside of the China-India binary and pursue non-aligned geopolitical and economic goals.

Earlier Chinese infrastructural limitations in Tibet and the Himalayan region had not allowed Nepal’s greater cooperation with its Northern neighbor. However, the installation of railways and connectivity in the twenty-first century gives Kathmandu a willing partner in Beijing to counterbalance Delhi’s influence.

India and Nepal’s cultural resemblances, including both countries having Hindu majority populations, make Nepal a natural tourist destination for Indian travelers. Despite Nepal’s growing tourism sector, most tourists come from neighboring countries, with a lion’s share of the country’s arrivals crossing the border from India. However, in recent years, the number of Chinese tourists has grown in part to visit Buddhist heritage sites of Nepal and participate in adventure sports.

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has devastated the global tourism industry. About 47.7 million travel and tourism jobs have been affected across South Asia. Despite tourism being one of South Asia’s fastest-growing sectors in the past. Among the countries in South Asia with the most reduction in tourist arrivals in 2020 were Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, which each saw between a 70 and 80 percent reduction in tourist arrivals. However, Nepal’s tourism sector has bounced back with a 156.83 percent growth in April 2022

As Nepal’s tourism sector revitalizes, there are opportunities to mold it into an effective soft power medium for outreach to countries beyond India and China, and diluting the geopolitical tussle that Nepal is at the moment entangled in. The promotion of tourism as part of a nation’s soft power arsenal should be treated no differently from developing a company’s marketing strategy. Developing a favorable and lasting image of a country internationally will in many cases help it enhance cooperation even in the economic and military domains in the future.

Nepal could try reducing its dependence on India and China by using one of its biggest resources its tourism sector to attract visitors from countries outside of China and India. For this purpose, Nepal must diversify its tourism base. Yet, Nepal’s policymakers are still prioritizing these two countries in their tourism plans, such as in the “Visit Nepal Decade” plan.  Although Nepal already has on arrival visa policy for most nationalities, the Nepal’s Tourism Board can adopt more proactive steps to promote international tourism through its embassies and missions abroad, and use this medium as a soft power tool for people-to-people linkage and build relations beyond its immediate neighborhood.

From a political perspective, Nepal’s location is an ideal place for diplomatic negotiations. Nepal is home to SAARC’s Secretariat and UNICEF’s South Asia Headquarters. With the country now taking a role in the BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal) sub-regional grouping, connectivity is expected to hasten and Nepal will have access to Bangladeshi ports. Although this connectivity pact is between four South Asian nations, once this is operational, Nepal will get the opportunity to connect by the high seas to multiple countries outside the region and will be to attract tourists from outside the world.

In the post-COVID-19 period, Nepal needs to prioritize climate change adaptation and environmental preservation for the survival of its tourism industry. As a less-developed country, Nepal suffers disproportionately from flooding and landslides. Recently, the country’s tourism department announced that it is planning to move the Everest base camp because of rapidly thinning glaciers and erosion from climbers. More collaboration with neighboring SAARC countries that are also disproportionately affected by climate change, such as Bangladesh and the Maldives, would help Nepal adopt cheaper adaptation methods.

Nepal’s “balancing act” between India and China is something practiced by other smaller countries in South Asia, including Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka. As Nepal struggles to balance relations with India and China, the tourism sector provides a much-needed outlet to develop relations with third countries outside of the subcontinent.

The tourism sector can be used to reach out to nations beyond South Asia via the high seas by effective use of the BBIN framework as well as through the promotion of Nepal’s Buddhist heritage, while simultaneously addressing pertinent issues, such as human rights and climate change. As with any form of soft power, tourism will have limits as opposed to hard power such as military or economic might, but Nepal’s tourism sector has considerable untapped potential which can be a tool to promote its national interest in a progressively competitive geopolitical landscape.