China-Nepal Railway: debt trap, godsend, threat to India, or just a pie in the sky?
The idea of a railway linking China to Nepal has captured imaginations on both sides of the border ever since Mao Zedong and King Birendra first mooted the idea in 1973.In the decades since, the dream has survived a royal massacre in which Birendra was shot to death by his own son and heir, a Maoist insurgency and decade-long civil war, an earthquake that killed 9,000 and destroyed many of Kathmandus most iconic monuments, and a crippling five-month trade blockade by India.Now, 45 years
