<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">China assured the visiting Nepalese Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka of giving financial aid to Nepal to support the feasibility study of the China-Nepal cross-border railway which was facing uncertainty due to internal political instability in Nepal and COVID-19. </p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">In a meeting with his Nepalese counterpart in Shandong province on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that surveyors would be sent to Nepal to examine the feasibility of a line linking Kathmandu and the southern Tibetan city of Gyirong.The two sides signed an agreement to cooperate on a possible railway line under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2018, but there are long-standing concerns about the cost and technical difficulty of building the line and little concrete progress has been made since then.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"> </p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Chinese Foreign Ministry in a statement said the two sides will speed up the Kathmandu Ring Road Improvement Project (Phase II) at a faster pace and advance electric power interconnection projects. The two sides will strengthen the Electric Power Cooperation Plan and build the Trans-Himalayan Multi-Dimensional Connectivity Network.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">According to Nepal's embassy in Beijing, Wang also announced that Beijing would provide 800 million RMB (US$119 million) to Nepal this year, and reassured Khadka that it would soon begin construction of the second phase of a project to improve the ring road in Kathmandu, which has been delayed almost four years due to labour disputes and technical difficulties.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222;">The two foreign ministers also agreed to promote further cooperation in areas such as trade, health, tourism, agriculture and poverty alleviation.</span></p>