As we have learned from the long blockade at the Indian borders, we are heavily dependent on India for many daily requirements. The turmoil with the political parties has been a long running evasion of countries’ problems. Concealing problems of country with their own demands and needs have left the country somewhere in the middle of nowhere. No government has been able to choose development as their main objective. And the conflict between the elites seem more like as child’s game than a path to a better country.
While there are talks about diversifying the imports from China, there hasn’t been much development in that case. Moreover, as always the political parties are after each other again. Do they want the country to develop and grow? People are highly doubtful.
Even if the government plans and achieves the goals to import daily requirements from China, it has to be careful. There are many reasons this might offend India and initiate ways to make Nepal suffer. Moreover, at the end of the day, the people are the ones that suffer the most and not the leaders of political parties.
The Internet link is something that should not be sourced from China. China has a long-standing censorship and blocks and monitors the Internet traffic with keen interest. The great firewall of China is a well-known method by the state to block exposure and limiting information to its people. India, however, is not known to censor internet in such dedication. There are many cases that most hardware and software exports from China also track and send back data to China. The companies caught includes Lenovo, Xiomi, ZTE, Huawei.
Hardware companies are not the only ones found to be sending information back to their servers in China while they should not have been. Chinese mobile business Cheetah Mobile has been known to load their apps with adware which are nearly useless. Maxthon is caught sending data from its browser back to China. There are no short of news of this software sending data to China.
In the light of these events, policy makers in Nepal should be cautious in dealing with hardware manufacturers gaining ground in Nepal as well as implementing China as the main source of Internet in Nepal. Moreover, should control the growth of these companies. Nepal might not be the source major interest for China, but unsolicited data harvesting is dangerous in the long run.
These may sound like a paranoid attempt at limiting technology. However, the reveals are critical factors, and China is very capable of monitoring necessary communication component of the country.
