Xi visits Myanmar to drive home Belt and Road plan

MYITSONE, Myanmar: China´s President Xi Jinping arrives in Myanmar this week to nail down multi-billion-dollar infrastructure deals in a country abandoned by many in the West appalled at the “genocide” of Rohingya Muslims on leader Aung San Suu Kyi´s watch. Xi´s two-day visit, his first as president, will seek to cement Beijing´s position as Myanmar´s largest investor and strategic partner.

The much-trumpeted China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) aims to connect the Middle Kingdom to the Indian Ocean, a key route in Beijing´s Belt and Road Initiative that envisions Chinese infrastructure and influence spanning the globe. In addition to offering tens of billions of dollars in investment, China shields its neighbour at the United Nations, where pressure is mounting for accountability over the Rohingya crisis. Yet the relationship between the countries is tangled. Ethnic conflicts sizzling in border zones and the impact of dams, pipelines and transport links risk awakening hostility over Chinese intentions. For China, it is “time to get things back on track”, historian Thant Myint-U wrote in his latest book.

The headline deal will likely be a colossal factory zone and deep-sea port in Rakhine state, which lies on Myanmar´s west coast beside the Bay of Bengal. Myanmar successfully slashed the cost of Kyaukphyu port from $7.2 billion to $1.3 billion, reducing the chance of it turning into a debt trap. Like other Chinese-led projects, however, public details are scant. Rakhine´s northern fringes saw 740,000 Rohingya forced out in a bloody military crackdown in 2017. The state remains the stage for a civil war between the military and an ethnic Rakhine rebel group. Undeterred, Myanmar has declared the area open for business. While Western investors have shunned the opportunity, China — competing against other regional giants — has few such qualms. Billions of cubic metres of gas and millions of barrels of oil from offshore rigs are pumped each year across the country to China. Beijing now wants to secure plans for a high-speed rail link between the port and China´s landlocked Yunnan province. Other key projects include industrial zones on the shared border and a makeover for commercial hub Yangon. Analyst Richard Horsey said the visit brings both huge opportunity and enormous risk for Myanmar. “They feel they´re again over-reliant on China and that´s a very dangerous place to be. China already holds the largest share — around $4 billion or 40 percent — of Myanmar´s foreign debt.