On Eve Of Royal Visit To China
A Chronology Of Nepal-China Visits

By M.R. Josse

AT THE friendly invitation of Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Their Majesties the King and Queen will be paying a state visit to the people’s republic of China, beginning in the last week of this month.

PAST VISITS: His Majesty King Birendra’s impending state visit to China will be the third since accession. To recall, the two earlier occasions were in December 1973 and August 1993, respectively.

In August 1996, His Majesty paid an unofficial visit to China on which occasion he visited Tibet for the third time. (Earlier visits to Tibet were in 1976 and 1982.)

(Incidentially, His Majesty the King has, as of now, paid three state visits to India—in October 1973, May 1993 and January 1999, respectively.)

From the Chinese side, the most recent, highest-level visit since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Nepal and China in 1955 was the state visit of President Jiang in December 1996.

Earlier, high-level visits from the Chinese side include those by Premier Zhou Enlal, elder statesman Deng Xiaoping, President Li Xiannian, Premier Zhao Ziyang, Premier Li Peng, and Chairman Li Ruihuan.

Though His Majesty’s forthcoming journey to China will be the third state visit by the Nepalese monarch to Nepal’s northern neighbour, interestingly enough, His Majesty has visited China on seven other past occasions, including the very first time in 1966 as Crown Prince.

From the Nepalese side, it may be recalled that Prime Minister Tanka Prasad Acharya (1956), Prime Minister B.P. Koirala (1966), and His Late Majesty King Mahendra (1961) also paid highly memorable visits to China.

In more recent times, Prime Ministers Girija Prasad Koirala (1992), Man Mohan Adhikari (1995), and Sher Bahadur Deuba (1995) have also paid official visits to China.

Other important visitors to China from Nepal include political personalities such as former Premier Krishna Prasad Bhattarai UML’s general secretary, Madhav Kumar Nepal and former House Speakers, Daman Nath Dhungana and Ram Chandra Poudel.

In August last year, Foreign Minister Chakra Prasad Banstola proceeded on an official visit to China to participate in ceremonies in Beijing marking the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two neighbours.

PRE-VISIT EVENTS: Revealingly, the current month which will witness the state visit of Their Majesties to China is marked, or will be, by many events bearing upon Nepal-China ties.

At the start of the month, for example, the third annual meeting of the consultation mechanism between the foreign ministries of Nepal and China was held in Kathmandu.

During those official-level talks, as per a Shital Niwas press release, the Chinese side reiterated its agreement to provide additional trading points in Tibet to facilitate trade relations between the two countries.

Significantly, the Chinese delegation also conveyed its government’s agreement to expedite the construction of the Syabrubesi-Rasuwagadi highway of connect with the township of Kerung in Tibet.

It may be recalled that a Chinese technical team had completed the preliminary survey of the road in 2000. It is generally believed that the proposed highway will not only relieve pressure on the Arniko (Kathmandu-Kodari) Highway but also help promote trans-Himalayan trade, besides generally boosting the economic growth of the region.

At the said round of official meetings, the Chinese side-conveyed its government’s decision to extend consular jurisdiction of the Royal Nepalese Consulate General in Hong Kong to Macao too.

A five-member Chinese delegation led by Shen Weiping. Vice-President, China Association for International Friendly Contact, is visiting Nepal at the invitation of the China Study Centre, soon.

The fact that the delegation includes not only scholars from the China Institute of International Studies but also those of the People’s Liberation Army, the National Defence University, and the Academy of Military Science is significant. So, too, for that matter, that a member of the said delegation is Pei Yuan-Ying, a former Chinese ambassador to India.

Notable also is that former Prime Minister Kirti Nidhi Bista, who has visited China many times including as prime minister, is participating at the Asian Forum to be held on the Chinese island of Hainan. The International conference is expected to focus in general on issues bearing upon peace and prosperity in Asia.

Even more notable perhaps is the 21-24 February 2001 visit to Nepal of Chinese Defence Minister Chi Haotian—on the very eve of Their Majesties departure for China—after concluding visits to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, respectively.

FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND: The significance of Chi’s visit can be gauged at two levels. One is underlined by the fact that it will represent the very first time that any incumbent Chinese defense minister has paid an official visit to Nepal.

The other is that it marks the culmination of a series of visits between military leaders of the two countries in recent times, including two Nepalese Chiefs of Army Staff and two visits by People’s Liberation Army delegations, including that is April 2000 led by its chief of general staff, Gen. Fu Quanyou.

The above chronology clearly underlines that Nepal is considered to be both important to China as well as friendly towards her. Since that holds good equally for Nepal as far as her overall relations with China go, all portents on the ground suggest that Their Majesties state visit to China will be most memorable.

Accredation System In Higher Education

By Dr. Radhaber D. Khati

THERE was a time, not quite long ago, when education particularly higher education, was something which could hardly be craved for by the general public in our country. Only a very few socio-politically privileged groups could have that opportunity. That notion of higher education still persists but in a different shape and colour. People look for education, because that brings them status, wealth and a glorious future. The race is not just for a degree, diploma or certificate, somehow made available by education institutions. to the students. But something more than that. AT this stage of openness and objectivity in the judgement and evaluation of the caliber and qualification of a candidate. It is important to make sure that the credentials that are obtained are not just a piece of paper, but would really support to effectively assist the candidate for the prosperous future. This, in another way, could appear like a proof that genuinely reflects their own academic achievement.

In our system of present higher education it is the institution, within which run various. Institutes and Faculties that decides who gets what kind of credentials after the end of the course designed for a particular level of study. This they do by employing measures like formal examinations for the evaluation of students. But what/who determines as to who really deserves to get the credentials? Who decides what should be the examining/judging factors for evaluating the institution? Who decides what should be the criteria for judgement? Who evaluates the performance of institutions financially supported by the same funding agency under one and the same criteria, run under one and the same academic management system, and organised under one and the same administrative and the management support system, but have produced disturbingly wide varieties of performance outcomes? The ultimate sufferers of this diivergent and low educational outcome are not as much the financial, academic, organisational or even the administrative factors involved in the running of an educational organisation, as are the students themselves. Actually, it is the students, who, wish for themselves a very bright future, see their future blurred, and parents, who cherish big hopes for the future of their wards, see their hopes dwindled. Therefore, the challenge facing serious educational institutions is to reasonably bridge the gap between examinations, conduct classes, award some kind of diploma, on the one hand, and impart the really marketable knowledge and the expertise that he/she can sell in an open national, regional or even the international job markets, on the other. The task of educational leaders was never so tough and challenging as it is now, because it requires in them a strong sense of confidence so that their expertise gained through great exposure and experience would help them make our students succeed in meeting challenges that they encounter in order to brighten their future.

Problem

This is so, mainly because of the ever changing and ever widening purpose of education. In our perspective, the purpose, first, was to avail educational opportunity to the people within the country then, it was aimed to become linked with job and the equipment to work. Thus, education became attached to the goals of national development. Our educational system has been claiming to produce able and skilled manpower to successfully compete in the national manpower market. But that is gradually becoming a conservative claim. Our educationists and educational planners are not just supposed to take care of local and national needs in working-our educational plans and programmes, they also need to be abreast of the demands of the job markets coming up nationally, regionally and internationally these days, and more in the future.

Therefore, the need of the hour is not just to provide opportunities for higher education, but also to ensure the quality of what we offer as education. We have been hearing the demands for quality, as pouring in from different sectors of life, especially, those close to the field of manpower production and the consumption of it. When we talk of the quality in education, we tend to feel education as something which is to be examined and judged in terms of its quality, employability, trustworthiness and competitiveness. The probable questions are, against what the quality should be judged? How to see where the quality is and where it is not? We tend to involve these many components to judge the quality in education, because we believe that the term quality in education is something like the quality of a consumable item. Low quality item would mean low quality materials used, inefficient manpower involved and low quality management system employed to produce it. Therefore, it is up to us to decide as to which aspect of quality deterioration needs to be dealt with first.

Necessity

It has been a widely accepted fact that education has been infected with an epidemic of a fall in the quality. Such expression is based even on the results of the traditional system of exams that has been put into operation since the inception of higher education system itself about half a century from now. Therefore, it can be said that quality in our higher education has suffered from the inefficiency, caused more by internal rather than the external environment. The World Bank Report (2000) sheds enough light on the issue. According to the Report the top three faculties in terms of students enrolment, Faculty of Management, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Faculty of Education have the lowest level of academic achievement.

Therefore, the greater the rate of failure the higher the wastage in terms of public and private educational finances, efforts and times of the students and the teachers. Thus, the greater the amount of educational wastage, the lesser the degree of public trust on the prevalent system of higher education.

This wasted amount would, otherwise, have fed millions of hungry stomachs or have made literate half of a million of illiterates in such a poor country like ours. Does not it hurt the feelings of a man with some sense? What can be more disheartening?

Hence, our experience and observations, supported by hard evidence of regular studies in the field, speak for themselves about the problems adversely affecting the quality improvement in higher education. They are, absence of educational policy-making agency at the national level and need for the institutionalisation of evaluation and recognition systems at higher education level, so as to bring quality in the academic performance. No agency has yet been set up and the process developed to authentically and scientifically deal with quality problem in education even if there are comments and criticisms on the issue of quality in education. There is lack of any policy with regard to the control and evaluation of the performance of higher educational activities and of rational system of self-evaluation and so forth.

Therefore, to effectively avert the present sliding motion of quality in higher education a time tested system, already adopted with success by the best known universities in the western world, are suggested to be tried-out with an addition of certain indigenously appropriate components in it. This system of controlling the deterioration of quality and the maintaining of this control for long is termed as a system of accreditation. Therefore, this process of accreditation is suggested mainly to perform the process of evaluation and recognition of quality in higher educational institution, being about the issue of quality to the forefront, suggest the concerned authority about the suitable measures to be taken, follow up the course of action taken for this.

In this regard, the system of regular accreditation of the institution as a whole, and not only the examination or the evaluation of students of the teachers, for their regular or occasional academic performance, has to be taken into consideration. In our context, too, where we have already and incessantly shown our concern about the quality of educational delivery/achievement system even though with not much success and not much gains, about it. This time-tested institutional accreditation system can be of great benefit if put in the hands of sincere and sensible people. So, let us see what this system is about and how it can work in the production of quality in education. as a major concern of educationists, educational planners and administrators and even the students and their parents. Thus, if we think of it as a system of evaluating and recognising the quality of an academic institution, we need to come up with a system that works as a process of reasonably laying out norms and criteria of evaluating institution as a whole. This innovative system works for it by recognising the standards of institutions and also by measuring their performances based on defined and approved criteria. Therefore, accreditation could be taken as a system of recognition to be accorded to the institutions to meet standards and criteria that are put forward by a competent agency or association, constituted by higher educational authorities for the purpose.

In Dubai, All That Glitters Is Gold

By Bassem Mroue

WTIH low customs duties on imported gold and low wages for craftsmen, Dubai has become one of the world’s biggest retail gold jewelry markets by offering high quality pieces at cheap prices.

And it is an international market - jewelry from Italy, craftsmen from India, merchants from Syria and shoppers, it seems, from just about everywhere.

"Dubai has variety, prices and quality," says Tawfique Abdullah, chairman of the Gold and Jewelry Group, a trade organization that includes 379 of Dubai’s estimated 450 jewelry shops.

"The jewelry trade itself is expanding and demand is increasing. In the year 2000 we had something like an extra 15 outlets opened by retailers," Abdullah says, estimating the volume of the jewelry trade in Dubai last year at about dlrs 1 billion.

Long a trading link between East and West, sitting on the southeastern corner of the Saudi Peninsula, Dubai has been a major importer of gold for years, becoming the world’s leader in 1997 with annual imports of about 650 metric tons.

"Dubai is a great place to buy gold. There is a huge choice and prices are much cheaper than other places," Zeina Hazimeh, a 32-year-old Jordanian, says while trying on rings in Deira, the commercial center and home to Dubai’s Gold Market.

Designs appeal to multicultural tastes. The safami, an elaborate gem-encrusted necklace from which coins and pendants dangle, is a popular Arabic style. Shops also offer intricate Indian looks and the latest fashions from Europe.

The 18-carat gold that Europeans are used to can be found as easily as the 21-carat pieces Arabs prefer or the 22- and 24-carat gold most popular in Asia. Pieces are sold by weight - the latest price per gram is listed in Dubai’s daily newspapers - and an additional fee depending on the craftsmanship involved.

Abdullah, of the merchants’ association, says prices in Dubai are 30 percent to 70 percent cheaper than in Europe. He says an average retailer in Dubai sells between 500 grams and two kilograms of gold a day.

Much of the jewelry is imported, but the emirates of Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman have some 450 workshops, most staffed by Indian and Pakistani craftsmen. They produce about 45 percent of the jewelry sold locally as well as some pieces for export.

"We have wholesalers here selling to the United States, for example, selling to Europe and even selling to India," Abdullah says.

Government initiatives like an annual shopping festival, which is heavily advertised in the region, help support the trade, says Karim Merchant, an Indian who is the joint managing director of Pure Gold Jewelers, which runs six shops in Dubai.

Jameel Abulkasm, a Syrian who owns Jamal Jewelry Co., imports jewelry from Italy for sale to Dubai’s retailers and export to neighboring countries. He says low customs duties were one of the reasons he started his business in Dubai two years ago.

There is no sales tax on gold and the customs duty of 4 percent is sometimes, such as during special promotions or festivals, waived altogether.

Mohamad Shakarchi, managing director of Emirates Gold, the Persian Gulf’s main refining, minting, die making and foundering company, believes Dubai could attract half of the world’s gold production in a few years.

Shakarchi says that out of the world’s annual production of about 2,500 tons, the Indian subcontinent and Arab countries combined buy 60 per cent.

"Dubai is the center," he says. "Dubai is needed."

AP