Kathmandu, June 28 -- They say you can choose your enemies, but not your neighbours. This rings true especially for small nation states bordering much larger ones.

And that is also what Mao Zedong told King Mahendra in Beijing in 1967, and it is the message successive Chinese leaders have given to Nepal's rulers ever since: be clever, don't rock the boat, learn to live with India.

In Beijing in 1988, Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi demarcated each other's spheres of influence: south of the Himalaya India calls the shots, and north of it (including Tibet) China does.

Lila Nyaichyai, who did her PhD on Chinese Public Diplomacy in Nepal from Yunnan University, says China's main concern in Nepal is stability.

"As a country grows to becom...