Nepal, Nov. 29 -- This past week, a tidbit from a story on The Record caught my attention: although it was long suspected that China had been partly assisting Nepal Police with surveillance equipment, the news article confirmed it. When its reporters visited the control room at Metropolitan Police headquarters at Ratna Park, 'the entire space [was] dominated by an enormous screen which...beamed text in Chinese that we could not read, headed by the phrase "China-Nepal" in English.'

While human rights activists have long accused Nepal Police of installing CCTV cameras in Bouddha for surveilling on Tibetan refugees, Nepal Police spokespeople and senior officials have refuted this allegation. Instead, the Police has been saying that CCTVs as...