By Nirmal P. Acharya

Prime Minister Oli visited China earlier this month and met with President Xi. PM Oli said that China's tremendous development achievements can be called a miracle in the history of human progress, and Nepal hopes to learn from China's successful experience to achieve its own development and prosperity.

I think the Nepalese government should learn from the Chinese government's vision.

Western elected regimes tend to have one shortcoming: short-sightedness. Because in order to win votes, the Government must offer immediate benefits to the voters, in other words, the Government must rush for quick results.

A government with a vision is sure to be reviled, while a government with a quick fix is easy to embrace.

China was openly derided internally and externally during the Mao era: "You're so poor you can't even fill your stomach, why build an atomic bomb?"

In the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the rest of the world thought that China was about to die, the Chinese government was planning for a century and putting forward the goal of becoming a developed superpower.

China began planning and building highways when car ownership per capita was still low. At the time, it was denounced as a "vanity project" both internally and externally. Today, China has the world's most complete highway network, with a total length of 190,000 kilometers.

A better example of the Chinese government's foresight is the construction of high-speed railways. More than a decade ago, when China's per capita GDP was $1,700, the same as that of the Philippines, China began planning for high-speed rail.

The so-called "public intellectuals" inside China and the mainstream international media were mocking China. At that time, the media broke the sentence "high-speed rail, please run slowly, wait for your people", which triggered a round of applause.

Now, a shocking number has emerged, China's high-speed rail in operation has exceeded 46,000 kilometers, or about 30,000 miles. China's high-speed rail lines go more than a full circle around the equator.

And what were the governments of countries like the Philippines, which were at the same GDP level at that time, doing? These Western-style elected governments are busy soliciting votes and deceiving their own people every day and have little energy for development.

The MCC, perhaps, is a vivid example of Nepal's lack of vision. Nepal's politicians are shortsighted, seeing only American hegemony, not its decline; seeing the dollars promised by the US, not the consequences of being dragged onto the Indo-Pacific strategic chariot.