Given its complicated relation with India, China is seeking to leverage other countries in South Asia to increase its soft power in the region and offer an alternative to India’s traditional influence. Most of China’s investments in this region have revolved around green infrastructure and heavy industry and have directly impacted the region’s climate resilience and the livelihoods of local communities. Join us for a Global Voices Insights in English with prominent experts and journalists from Nepal, Bangladesh, and China to find out how Global Voices’ co-writing journalistic fellowship model is bringing nuance to this complex topic.
Join us on YouTube Live on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, at 9:15 am GMT/ 3:00 pm NPT / 2:45 pm IST for a discussion featuring:
Sonia Awale is the Editor at the Nepali Times newspaper in Kathmandu, where she has also served as the health, science and environment correspondent. She has extensively covered the impact of the climate crisis on the Himalayas, air pollution, disaster preparedness, migration and public health — looking at their political and economic interlinkages. Ms Awale is a graduate of public health, and has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Hong Kong.
Kunda Dixit is editor and publisher of Nepali Times and the Himal magazine and co-publisher of Himal Southasian magazine. He worked as news reporter for the BBC at UN Headquarters in New York in 1985-86. He subsequently served as Asia-Pacific director of Inter Press Service from 1990 to 1996; then returned to Nepal, where he headed from 1997 to 2000 the South Asia office of the Panos Institute. His publications include Dateline Earth: Journalism as if the Planet Mattered (Inter Press Service, 1997, 2012) and numerous articles in the print media and online on climate change, conflict and social media issues. Kunda is also the author of a trilogy of books (A People War; Never Again; People After War) on the Nepal conflict that is regarded as a model for the media’s role in post-war reconciliation. He is visiting faculty at Kathmandu University Media Department, and graduated from Columbia University, School of Journalism in New York.
Moderator: Rezwan is the regional editor for South Asia and the translation manager for Bangla Lingua for Global Voices. As a longtime contributor to Global Voices, he has worked on different projects including Rising Voices, the Civic Media Observatory, and the China Index, and has also collaborated on different advocacy and human rights projects as a freelance researcher, translator, and consultant.
We look forward to having you join us on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, at 9:15 am GMT/ 3:00 pm NPT / 2:45 pm IST (click here to convert to your local time zone).