Beijing back on the make with Myanmar

Beijing has seized the opportunity of Western dismay about the Rohingya to rebuild its relationship with Myanmar.

Wang Yi attends the Asia Europe Foreign Ministers meeting in Naypyidaw on Monday. Picture: AP

Beijing has seized the opportunity of Western dismay about the plight of the Rohingya to rebuild rapidly the close relationship with Myanmar it enjoyed during decades of military rule.

China’s proposal of a ceasefire has been welcomed by Bangladesh — to which more than 600,000 Rohingya have fled — and Myanmar.

And at a meeting in Naypyidaw with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced a new economic corridor would be developed between the two countries.

It will start in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan, extending into Myanmar to the central city of Mandalay, east to Yangon and west to the Kyaukpyu special economic zone. The countries share a 2200km border.

Mr Wang stressed the economies were highly complementary. He said the corridor was intended to deepen co-operation between the two countries under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It would help connect Myanmar’s core central economic region with its less-developed west.

From China’s perspective, it would provide long-sought access to the Indian Ocean, said Gu Xiaosong, head of Southeast Asian studies at Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences.

Construction is well advanced on a $2 billion pipeline through which China will pump 22 million tonnes of Middle Eastern crude oil every year, starting next April, from the Bay of Bengal, without the need for tankers to sail through the disputed waters off the rest of Southeast Asia.

China has retained for decades a strong relationship with the Myanmar military, including as its most important supplier of equipment and of training.

Mr Wang outlined a three-step “solution” to the Rohingya crisis. The first step would be a ceasefire, so residents should no longer be displaced. This, he said, was already in effect. In the second stage, there needed to be greater consultation between Myanmar and Bangladesh on an agreement to repatriate the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled to Bangladesh.

The third step would be to seek a long-term solution to a problem Mr Wang said had its origins in poverty. This should involve the international community helping to back poverty alleviation work in Rakhine state, where violence has been greatest.

He spoke as diplomats from 51 countries met in Naypyidaw for the regular Asia Europe Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.

The Chinese proposal leaves to one side the issue of assessing responsibility for the violence, despite the UN’s definition of Myanmar’s military crackdown as ethnic cleansing.