Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday doubled down on his support for fallen rights icon Burmese State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, signing dozens of infrastructure and trade deals and meeting with the Burmese army chief accused of overseeing a genocide against Rohingya Muslims.
Xi’s state visit to Myanmar’s purpose-built capital, Naypyidaw, came as Western investors are giving a wide berth to the country due to the Rohingya crisis.
A 2017 military crackdown on the minority, which UN investigators called genocide, forced about 740,000 people from western Rakhine State over the border into Bangladesh.
Photo: AP
Beijing has stood by the increasingly isolated nation and reaffirmed its position in a joint statement in Chinese state media as Xi’s airplane left the Burmese capital after two days, escorted by fighter jets.
China “firmly supports Myanmar’s efforts to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests and national dignity in the international arena,” and for it to advance “peace, stability and development in Rakhine State,” the statement said.
China is Myanmar’s largest investor even as distrust of its ambitions lingers among the public.
Thirty-three agreements were signed yesterday, with Aung San Suu Kyi and Xi seated across from each other on long tables alongside ministers.
Details were scant, but among the deals was a concession and shareholders’ agreement on the US$1.3 billion Kyaukhphyu deep-sea port and economic zone, located in a part of Rakhine State left largely unscathed by the 2017 violence.
There was also a letter of intent for “new urban development” in Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, and feasibility studies for rail links.
The aim is to carve out a so-called “China-Myanmar Economic Corridor” that would serve as Beijing’s long-awaited gateway to the Indian Ocean.
After his arrival on Friday, Xi called the visit a “historical moment” for China-Myanmar relations, state-run newspaper the Global New Light of Myanmar reported.
He also touched on the “unfairness and inequality in international relations” in what could be seen as a slight against the US, the newspaper said.
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