Nepal constitutes an important element of China’s South Asia policy. In the 1950s, soon after the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), Mao Zedong spoke of Tibet and the Himalayas, describing Tibet as “China’s right hand’s palm”, which is detached from its “five fingers”, meaning Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. As all of these five fingers were under the influence of India, he said, it was China’s responsibility to "liberate" them and have them re-joined with Tibet.

The five fingers served as a new “buffer zone” between India and China after Tibet fell under China’s control. However, with tensions increasing in Tibet, especially in the wake of the March 2008 uprising, China’s relationship with Nepal began to take on a new dimension, with an ever-intensifying role in Nepal’s political, economic, military and religious spheres. Here we analyse China’s use of soft power to win control over Nepalese hearts and minds through one of Nepal’s great cultural assets: the world heritage site of Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha.  

Lumbini is located a mere 7 km from Nepal’s southern border with India in the a lowland “Terai” region of northern India and southern Nepal that lies south of the outer foothills of the Himalayas and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Lost and overgrown in the jungles of Nepal in the medieval period, the site was rediscovered in 1896, and for most of the 20th Century it comprised simply a collection of ruins, with the addition of a Tibetan temple built jointly in the late 1960s by a senior Tibetan lama of the Sakya sect Chobgye Trichen and the unofficial King of Mustang, Jigme Dorje Palbar Bista.

Various plans for the development of Lumbini as a major international pilgrimage and tourism destination were made over the years. A master plan was drawn up in 1978 by a Japanese architect in conjunction with the UN and with the encouragement of the Nepalese authorities. However it was beyond the resources of Nepal's government and it failed to garner international co-operation, leaving the site only partially completed.

Then in 2011, the Chinese came up with a proposal piloted by a non-governmental organisation called the “Asia Pacific Exchange and Co-operation Foundation” (APECF) to invest U.S. $3 billion in an audacious redevelopment project to transform Lumbini into a sprawling “Buddhist Mecca” including a “vertical theme park” tower with a panoramic view of the India-Nepal border and packed with electronic equipment. APECF is headed by Xiao Wunan, a former senior cadre of the Communist Party of China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD). Its Executive Director Eric Tay graduated from China’s Air Force Institute of Engineering and has been involved in defence radar technology research and the procurement of high technology radar systems. The project was backed by Nepal’s then Communist Prime Minister Prachanda, who personally headed a committee to oversee the matter. The Chinese government and a UN group called “United Nations Industrial Development Organization” (UNIDO) signed a deal to develop Lumbini into a “Special Development Zone”.

Xiao Wunan was also a Vice President of the World Buddhist Peace Foundation, which helped to organise the Beijing-sponsored World Buddhist Forums, triennial exercises in Chinese religious soft-power. In August 2012 he travelled to Dharamsala in India, home to the exiled “Central Tibetan Adminsitration”, and in a rare accomplishment managed to meet both the Dalai Lama and Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. According to the APECF website, Xiao and the Karmapa had a “pleasant talk about the issue of bilateral religious and cultural exchange”, which undoubtedly included APECF’s plans for Lumbini.

Nonetheless, APECF’s scheme finally faltered, ostensibly due to “lack of transparency and failure to submit its audit reports”, but certainly under serious objections raised by the Indian government.

A second attempt was reportedly made by China via a business magnate from Korea. His proposal was similar to Xiao Wunan's, at a comparable cost which involved upgrading site and the construction of a modern airport, hotels and even hospitals. Again, this proposal failed due to Indian objections.

A further attempt, according to Indian officials, was made in 2014 through Myanmar. A highly respected and influential Myanmarese Buddhist monk organised a conference on “Promotion, Protection and Preservation of Buddhist Culture and Heritage” at Lumbini and made a donation of US $150,000. Once again, concerns were raised as to the true source of these funds and China’s hand was suspected.

In 2016, an international Buddhist conference was organised in Kathmandu, followed by celebrations in Lumbini of the 2560^th birth anniversary of the Buddha. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been invited to attend, along with other dignitaries such as External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. However, the Indian officials all decided to boycott the events.

The Indian officials suspected that Nepal's Ministry of Culture Ananda Pokharel had accepted U.S. $1.5 million from China for the organising the events through an NGO called "Himalayan Border Area Relations Development Association" representing districts in Nepal and Tibet. Pokharel worked hand in hand in this NGO with Zhukang Tubdain Kaizhub, a Tibetan religious civil servant who plays key roles in Chinese structures such as the state-controlled Buddhist Association of China (BAC) and academic institutions tasked with adapting Tibetan Buddhism to better fit with Chinese socialism.

A part of the money was believed to have been transferred through donations from four Buddhist temples located in China, each believed to have donated U.S. $100,000. The remainder was reportedly routed directly through various Chinese hotels and commerce associations based in Nepal, as well as directly from the Buddhist Association of China, and its outpost in Lumbini, the “China Temple” (中华寺; zhōnghuá sì).

The China Temple is one of the largest of the new temples constructed within the Lumbini Development Zone, founded in 1996 and given its name by the BAC’s President, Zhao Puchu himself. It was inaugurated in 2000 and has since effectively served as the BAC’s foreign mission in Nepal. It is overseen by Master Yin Shun, one of the BAC’s powerful Vice Presidents, who is often present in connection with China’s soft power outreach in Nepal. For instance, in 2015 he accompanied Wang Zuo’an, Director of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs, on a three-day visit to Nepal, where he met with then President Ram Baran Yadav in Kathmandu to offer the Chinese government’s support to transform Lumbini. Wang Zuo’an also visited Lumbini with Yin Shun to celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Nepal and the PRC, where he spoke of “thousands of years of cooperation” symbolising the “perfect fusion of the two ancient civilisations”. Wang, an avowed Communist who believes that religious freedom is only the Party's prerogative to bestow or determine, posed somewhat awkwardly for photographs, praying for world peace.

A Chinese company, Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group, has been awarded the contract for building an international airport at Lumbini. This has strategic and economic implications for India. China’s presence in Lumbini is highly symbolic of the wider geopolitical dynamics in the Himalayas, and the struggle between India and China over Nepal as a strategic buffer. India understands this as a tactic employed by the Chinese to gain a strategic foothold in Nepal's Terai, near its porous border with India, and officials are concerned about increasingly large numbers of Chinese in Lumbini.

From a soft power perspective, the efforts by China in assisting Nepal to project Lumbini as the “Fountainhead of Buddhism” are an attempt to “set the record straight and counter other narratives on Buddhism”, i.e. to give primacy to Lumbini over Bodhgaya in India as the epicentre of Buddhist belief and pilgrimage. This conforms perfectly with China's pattern of psychological operations belonging to its “Three Warfares” doctrine, i.e. the posturing of diplomatic, economic, and cultural capabilities with the intention of intimidating adversaries and encouraging acquiescence to PRC-desired outcomes. In shifting the perception of the Nepalese towards Lumbini instead of Bodhgaya while simultaneously positioning itself as the benefactor and protector par excellence of Buddhism, China has weakened an important civilisational factor which has historically united India and Nepal.