Introduction

At the turn of the last decade of the 20th century, Asia experienced some tremendous changes in its politic arenas. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and a number of Central Asian republics subsequently emerged as independent entities, driven by political and socioeconomic reforms meant to bring out the best of their potential to eventually play their own role in the development of the region. Whereas exchanges with China slowly resumed in the Russian Far-East, Deng Xiaoping gave a significant impulse to the structural changes that had taken place during the post-Maoist era. In 1992, he launched the reforms that brought a distinctively Chinese version of liberalism to the country’s economy, which triggered remarkable developments in Mainland China and led it to eventually become one of the major economies in the world. In the meantime, China re-established a diplomatic relationship with Vietnam, which contributed to the development of special economic zones along their shared border and to the opening of an economic corridor with the purpose of disseminating Chinese goods, people, knowledge, and commercial influence in Southeast Asia. In the Indian subcontinent, the development of Nepal and the opening of its Mustang Kingdom to foreigners in 1992 provided opportunities for new international roads and a new role as a node linking Nepal with China through the Tibetan plateau.