The facts of the matter are fairly clear, but are worth recounting. The CPN-M came into being in the mid-1990s and in 1996 launched a People’s War. Till 2005 they waged a battle with the state in Nepal, till there was a change of strategy leading to a ceasefire and efforts to politically mainstream the party in 2005-06. After that came the demonstration of street power and following the general strike in 2006 the monarchy finally stepped down. This gave the CPN-M the chance to gain international legitimacy and they agreed to lay down arms and participate in the new electoral process.

Having been voted to power in early 2008, the CPN-M could not lead the coalition for much time leading to Prachanda’s resignation as Prime Minister in May 2009 over the issue of sacking of the then Army Chief General Katuwal. Since then Nepal has been in the throes of political uncertainty.

Prachanda’s visit to Beijing in October 2009

However, recent developments suggest that Beijing may have had a re-think about its strategy vis-a-vis the Communists/Maoists in Nepal.  The photos in the media of Prachanda shaking hands with Jia Qinglin in Beijing on October 12, 2009 made one thing very clear.  For the Chinese, the visit was an important one. The statements made by both sides sought to make it a party affair, where the chief of the UCPN-M met with chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

According to media reports, the UCPN-M chief praised China’s foreign policy of independence and peace, and added that his party would support the efforts China has made to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity. Interestingly, Prachanda is also said to have stated that his party would “learn from the CPC’s experience in governance through inter-party exchanges to make joint contribution to our traditional friendship.”[Chinese top political advisor pledges closer ties with Nepal, October 12, 2009.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-10/12/content_8783110.htm]

Clearly then, both sides are keen to take the process of strengthening bilateral party ties forward. This was in fact stated by Jia Qinglin during his meeting with Prachanda in Beijing and he added that they hoped that this visit would strengthen relations between the two parties.

[D. S. Rajan, China: Signs Of Ultra-Leftist Support To Maoists Of India And Nepal. Paper no. 1565, 05. 10. 2005.
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers16paper1565.html]

It is well known that in the past, at least officially, the Chinese have accused the so-called Maoists in Nepal of distorting Mao’s thoughts and besmirching the name of Mao with their indiscriminate killing of civilians  a People’s War. While commenting on the coup staged by King Gyanendra at a press conference at Beijing on February 3, 2005, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan expressed his indignation at foreign media who call Nepal’s anti-government rebels "Maoists".

Officially, the Chinese kept the Maoists at a distance while the Monarchy was still in power. But while providing arms and ammunition to the Palace in its fight against the Maoists, it seems that in 2003-2004 they provided arms to the so-called anti-Government miscreants. Reports indicated that and covert meeting did take place between some Maoists leaders and the Chinese Ambassador in a Kathmandu safe house.

The CCP view the Maoists as having made the maximum progress in its People’s War and its success would give a momentum to the armed struggles of the Maoists of other countries. Beijing sees India as possibly the most important obstacle in the way of the ultimate victory of the Nepalese Maoists. So the efforts at maintaining contact by regular invitations to Prachanda and other members of the UCPN-M from Beijing are part of the overall strategy of keeping in touch ‘to understand the problem.’ At the same time, it is convenient for the UCPN-M at this time to be publicly be seen to be allied to the CCP as it needs China as the foil to ensure that against any Indian interference in Nepal. It is precisely for this reason that the UCPN-M needs to maintain good relations with the Chinese State, despite ideological differences with the CCP.  

Views of Nepal’s Maoists about China

A reading of Maoists literature and statements made by party leaders in conferences and party meetings makes it clear that they are influenced by the ideas of the Chinese communists despite reservations by some within about particular individuals. They have also drawn inspiration from the activities of the Shining Path in Peru. Like the latter, the Maoists stated that their objective was to destroy government institutions and replacing them with a revolutionary peasant regime. Like the Shining Path, the Maoists deal[t] with dissent ruthlessly. [Alastair Lawson, Who are Nepal’s Maoist rebels?, BBC News, 6 June 2009]

Even during the People’s War, the Maoists used tactics used by the Shining Path, wherein it established strongholds in remote mountain regions, where police outposts are few and far between, enabling the guerrillas to move about freely. This was in contrast to the classic tactics of carrying out hit-and-run campaigns of annihilation against landlords in the densely populated lowlands,

The basic conditions in Peru and Nepal support the insurgency type of situation. According to Stephen L. Mikesell, a research scholar, "appealing geo-cultural analogies can be drawn between Peru and Nepal. Both countries straddle major mountain ranges of their respective continents, in which isolated valleys and high ridges have given way to a wide variety of cultural traditions. While neither country has a history of a recent foreign military conquest and occupation, as was the case in China in the 1930s, both have large rural indigenous populations subordinated to small ruling elites whom they are divided by racism or casteism and regionalism." [Bertil Lintner, Nepal struggles to cope with diehard Maoist violence. http://www.asiapacificms.com/articles/nepal_maoism/]

The party Prachanda heads, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), has purist members who believe that in China communism was diluted by later-day leaders in their bid to take their country to modernity. Some of them also do not see any plausible reason to discredit the tumultuous 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution, and there are some others who criticize paramount leader Deng Xiaoping for deviating from the original path for the sake of the economic prosperity of a few. [Dhruba Adhikary, Maoists go on pilgrimage in China http://www.morungexpress.com/analysis/35688.html]

In political terms, the Maoists insist that Nepal should have an executive presidency and a multi-party system in which the main party leads the other parties and that there is no official opposition bench. This means they desire to apply the Chinese model to Kathmandu. But the Maoists are hesitant to publicly express their preferences. Nepal, since liberation from autocratic rule in 1951, has practiced only the model adopted in countries with a parliamentary democracy.

More recently, in The Red Spark [Rato Jhilko], a journal of the Communist Party of Nepal, Baburam Bhattarai, wrote an article stating: “Today, the globalization of imperialist capitalism has increased many-fold as compared to the period of the October Revolution. The development of information technology has converted the world into a global village. However, due to the unequal and extreme development inherent in capitalist imperialism this has created inequality between different nations. In this context, there is still (some) possibility of revolution in a single country similar to the October revolution; however, in order to sustain the revolution, we definitely need a global or at least a regional wave of revolution in a couple of countries. In this context, Marxist revolutionaries should recognize the fact that in the current context, Trotskyism has become more relevant than Stalinism to advance the cause of the proletariat”.
[The Red Spark, July 2009, Issue 1, Page-10, translation from Nepali,
Source: http://www.revleft.com/vb/communist-party-nepal-t120291/index.html?s=f294db1950bddfcfcba99bc68c231eaf&t=120291]

At the second conference of the CPN (Maoist), a post for chairman was created for Prachanda. Until then, the chief of the organization had been its General Secretary. A report titled “The great leap forward: An inevitable need of history” was presented by Prachanda. This report was seriously discussed by the Central Committee of the party. Based on this report, the CPN (Maoist) adopted Prachanda Path as its ideology. After five years of armed struggle, the party realized that none of the proletarian revolutions of the past could be carried out on Nepal’s context. So having analyzed the serious challenges and growing changes in the global arena, and moving further ahead than Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, the party determined its own ideology, Prachanda Path.

Prachanda Path in essence is a different kind of uprising, which can be described as the fusion of a protracted people’s war strategy which was adopted by Mao in China and the Russian model of armed revolution. Professor Lok Raj Baral, in his writing about Prachanda Path says that this doctrine doesn’t apparently make an ideological break with Marxism and Leninism but finds that these doctrines’ strategies aren’t able to be replicated in Nepal as it was done in the past. Most of the Maoist leaders think that the adoption of Prachanda Path after the second national conference is what nudged the party into moving ahead with a clear vision ahead after five years of ‘people’s war’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Communist_Party_of_Nepal_(Maoist)

[To the Central Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. From CC CPN (M) June 2006
http://www.readingfromtheleft.com/PDF/Kasama/two_lines_five_letters_maoist_nepal.pdf]

In an interview in 2001, Prachanda stated that the party’s leadership was studying “the Chongqing Negotiations.” This refers to the CCP’s negotiations with the Guomindang that followed Mao’s report to the 7th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1945 (“On Coalition Government”). The US based MLM Revolutionary Study Group after careful analysis of the Chongqing Negotiations concludes that it was Mao’s integrated political, military and negotiating strategy that paved the way for the revolution in 1949.  The Political, Military and Negotiating Strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (1937-1946) and Recent Developments in Nepal By the MLM Revolutionary Study Group (February 2007, revised April 2009)
http://www.mlmrsg.com/attachments/054_CCPNepal-2009.pdf]

What exactly did Mao say in his Report to the CPC’s 7th National Congress titled ‘On Coalition Government’ in April 1945? This is relevant because the CPN-M is basing its strategy on certain statements within this work. First, Mao demanded recognition of the government in the liberated areas and advanced the concept of a new democratic state under the leadership of the proletariat after the abolition of the Kuo Ming Tang (KMT) one-party dictatorship; he also stated that a democratic coalition government would include the KMT and that it would convene a national assembly after free elections in both liberated and enemy-held areas. Second, Mao wrote that without a People’s army the people have nothing; he also stated that once the new democratic coalition government came into existence, the CPC would “hand their armed forces over to it.”

In this article Mao wrote that the KMT and CPC were “sure to fail in their negotiations,” and that “the arms of the people, every gun and every bullet, must all be kept, must not be handed over.” This was Mao’s strategic view of the situation, even while he made some tactical maneuvers at the bargaining table. Thus at Chungking, Mao offered to “nationalize” the army in stages, reduce the size of the Red armies, and give up some of the liberated areas in central China in order to form an elected democratic coalition government that would replace Chiang’s one-party dictatorship. Chiang would be required to withdraw his forces surrounding the liberated areas, reduce the size of the GMD armies, release all political prisoners and give legal status to the CPC.

One has to see the Maoist strategy in Nepal as an extension of Mao’s negotiating strategy in 1945 with the KMT. In essence, the Maoists of Nepal are following the strategy and tactics of Mao Tse tung of China with modifications to suit the situation in Nepal.

That the Maoists intend to keep up the pressure on the present political leadership and government of Nepal is only too well established in the light of the declaration of an autonomous state of Kirat. The Telegraph Nepal says: The agitating Unified Maoists’ Party have declared the Autonomous State on Monday, November 9, 2009. The Maoist Party politburo member and the coordinator of Kirat State Uprising Committee, Gopal Kirati, amid the presence of hundreds of Maoist cadres, had made the declaration in Diktel of Khotang District.” [Autonomous Kirat State declared in Nepal Telegraph Nepal, November 9, 2009]

As long as the Maoists continue to keep the pot boiling, the uncertain political situation in Kathmandu will continue. The declaration of autonomy in one part of Nepal is bound to snowball with the Maoists trying to show their political strength in areas of influence. This is People’s war on the streets but for the time being without the use of force or arms.

Such a situation has implications both for Nepal and countries in the neighbourhood.

• For Nepal it means continued political instability.
• For India it means that continued watch on the situation and to ensure that established government is not de-stabilised in any  way. It is in Indian interests to ensure that two main pillars of Nepal namely, constitution making and the peace accord are gone ahead with. Some changes mid-course may be required. This requires careful analysis of interests within Nepal and outside of the near and mid-term political conditions.
• It also means that closer attention has to be paid to what Beijing is saying about the role of the Maoists in any formation of a government in Nepal.
• For Beijing, it is a win-win situation. They have their pressure points any way; on Tibetan refugees and other matters.
• Expect Beijing to try and win over Kathmandu with positions of neutrality while propping up the UCPN-M as the main force behind stability in Nepal. This may be done purely with moral and political support.
• Expect the Maoists to keep the pressure on the present government. Threats of street demonstrations and the like will continue. Aim is to return to power. As seen above they will continue to resist integration of PLA cadres unless they can be assured of takeover of the Royal Nepalese Army. Control of the armed forces in political terms is the ultimate goal.