Another reason why Nepal is in China's pocket

We've all seen reports of Nepalese police beating and detaining Tibetan protesters. So why the support? The Reuters piece blithely states:

Nepal, which gets development grants from the Chinese government, accepts Tibet as part of China.

Let's not forget another form of "aid": arms sales. According to a Nepalese source:

Two huge jumbo size aircrafts landed at the TIA Kathmandu delivering huge cache of arms and ammunitions from China and US some ten day ago...
A consignment of 120 tons of modern weapons from China arrived first at the TIA, tentatively on January 25-26.

China is arming Nepalese government forces, enabling them to face off against a Maoist insurgency. Keeping Tibetan territory under Chinese control is clearly worth more than backing a Maoist insurgency no longer in ideological lockstep.

Despite its Maoist identification, the CPN(M) has not won Beijing's blessing. By the time the CPN(M) was formed, Beijing had led China some way into a pro-capitalist transformation in which revolutionary solidarity has little relevance.

This is a somewhat awkward situation tactically for the West, since the USA and the UK have been providing arms to the Nepalese government in order to keep the Maoist insurgency from gaining ground or linking up with other regional insurgencies. India has its own regional and internal reasons for courting Nepal with arms sales, such as allied insurgent groups operating within the state of Assam. All in all, the Nepalese government appears to be playing these disparate interests against each other in order to ensure a supply of arms, with moderate success.

Interestingly, the Nepalese Maoist insurgents apparently released a statement backing China earlier in March.

The CPN-Maoist Wednesday said that Tibet is an integral part of China.Issuing a press statement here on the ongoing unrest in the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Maoists expressed sadness over the continuing violence in Lhasa.
"We strongly condemn the incident that put at risk the freedom and sovereignty of the Chinese people. We want to draw the attention of the concerned authority to the activities against China at the Nepal-China border," Kantipur quoted the Maoist statement, as saying.

I wouldn't put it past China to be playing both sides of a conflict in Nepal, but it's also possible that the Nepalese Maoists are placating China with the aim of limiting the amount of arms China provides to the Nepalese government.