Illustration: Xia Qing/GT

My first visit to Nepal in 2011 left a lasting impression. As my plane descended into Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu at night, the city was shrouded in darkness, with only scattered candlelights flickering along the streets. A local friend explained that power outages were routine, sometimes lasting hours - or even days during dry seasons.  

This was the reality for a country blessed with the world's second-largest hydropower potential, yet crippled by inadequate infrastructure.  

Returning to Kathmandu over a decade later, I witnessed a transformed city: shops glowed with steady electricity, young people navigated neon-lit streets with smartphones in hand. Power cuts had become a thing of the past.  

Behind this change stands a Chinese enterprise: PowerChina. In 2017, the Upper Marsyangdi A Hydropower Station - a 50-megawatt project developed and operated by a Chinese company through its full lifecycle - began supplying electricity to Kathmandu and the tourism hub Pokhara. As a model of China-Nepal cooperation, the project has received several honors from the Nepali government.

A more transformative milestone arrived in 2021 with the completion of Nepal's Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Station. This 456-megawatt facility not only eliminated dry-season power shortages but transformed Nepal from an electricity importer to a net exporter. Remarkably, it contributes approximately 1 percent to Nepal's GDP.

By 2024, Nepal's total installed capacity surpassed 3,000 megawatts - exceeding peak domestic demand - with surplus monsoon-season power now being exported to India and Bangladesh. That December saw the two sides' readiness to expedite the feasibility of a China-Nepal cross-border transmission line traversing the Himalayas that will enable bidirectional energy exchange: sending Nepali hydropower to Xizang during rainy seasons and importing Chinese electricity during dry periods.

When a nation's energy security, industrial chains and trade networks remain vulnerable to external shocks, even carefully crafted neutrality becomes fragile. Nepal, a small mountainous country, faces significant development restrictions due to geopolitics. Therefore, it is vital to improve its infrastructure through international cooperation, laying a solid foundation for further development.

While India once pressured Nepal through border blockades and market access restrictions, and the US attempted to exert influence via its Millennium Challenge Corporation, the reality speaks louder: None of India's seven invested hydropower projects have been completed, whereas Chinese-built facilities generate a great deal of Nepal's electricity. American aid pledges pale in comparison to the tangible Belt and Road outcomes - from Pokhara International Airport to cross-border rail links that are reshaping this landlocked nation's economic geography.  

In December 2024, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli defied external pressures to advance Belt and Road cooperation during his China visit, prioritizing energy and transportation projects under Beijing's "extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefit" principle.  

Nepal's hydropower trajectory offers a case in point: By prioritizing infrastructure partnerships under the Belt and Road Initiative, it resisted pressures to abandon mutually beneficial Chinese investments despite external skepticism. This mirrors a broader truth - true autonomy stems not from equidistant diplomacy alone, but from economic strength. 

This underscores a critical rationale behind China's vigorous promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative: to enable developing countries to build endogenous "blood-making" mechanisms that solidify their economic development foundations. Rather than perpetuating aid dependency, the initiative prioritizes fostering self-reliance by equipping nations with infrastructure connectivity, industrial ecosystems and human capital essential for sustainable growth. 

It is also important for external forces to be genuinely willing to help the target country develop, rather than trying to control it, forcing it to choose a side. 
Today, Kathmandu's tangled web of overhead wires - a common sight in rapidly developing nations - symbolizes the growing pains of progress. For smartphone-toting youths racing through illuminated streets, there's no turning back from modernity. Once perceived as a pawn in geopolitical games, this mountainous nation now demonstrates through steady voltage that the right to development need not be sacrificed at the altar of geopolitical balancing acts.

The author is a senior editor with the People's Daily, and currently a senior fellow with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China. dinggang@globaltimes.com.cn. Follow him on X @dinggangchina