KATMANDU: China will increase official aid to Nepal by more than five times from fiscal 2015-16, officials said on Friday, to develop infrastructure in the landlocked nation where regional rival India has long wielded political influence.

The jump in assistance was announced after talks between visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Nepali counterpart Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, part of a deepening engagement which is expected to lead to a visit by President Xi Jinping next year.

Both India and China have been courting the Himalayan nation as they worry about its slow transition from a constitutional monarchy to a republic and the end of a 10-year civil war in 2006 that has left deep divides.

China is concerned about the presence of Tibetans in Nepal, many of whom have crossed the treacherous Himalayas from their homeland. On Friday, Wang laid the foundations of a police academy to train officers of Nepal’s Armed Police Force that guards districts bordering Tibet.

Beijing will build the police academy as a gift on top of the annual aid of $128 million, up from the current $24 million, Krishna Prasad Devakota, a Nepal Finance Ministry official, said.

“As neighbors China and Nepal have common security needs ... we need to work together to crack down on illegal border crossings and transnational crimes,” Wang told reporters.

Traditionally, Tibetan exiles captured by Nepali police were handed to the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees for their onward journey to India where the Tibetans’ spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is based.