Kathmandu, April 30 -- If Chinese President Xi Jinping's keynote address to the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in the Chinese capital Beijing last Friday is any indication, a polar shift in the global strategic balance has indeed become a reality. Antithetic though, the leader of the world's largest communist country Xi plays the most vociferous protagonist for global open market and free trade, the narratives thus far almost monopolistically employed for global policy homogenisation by the Western powers that be.

Xi promised that China would open up its market, enter into free trade agreements with more countries, increase imports of goods and services on a larger scale from the rest of the world and substantia...