Yun Sun, a senior associate with the East Asia Program at the Washington-based Stimson Center, cautioned that China’s support always comes at a price in a commentary she wrote about Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to China for the Myanmar online news site Mizzima on Thursday.
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The move angered China, which would have received around 90 per cent of the dam’s power.
The agreement came during talks between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who started a five-day official visit to China on Wednesday.
Ms Suu Kyi is due to hold talks with China’s President Xi Jinping today.
Now leading Myanmar with the title of state counselor, Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize victor who spent more than 15 years in detention, mostly in house arrest, under Myanmar’s former military junta, which was supported for years by the authoritarian Communist Party-led government in Beijing.
A Myanmar government commission has been formed to review the Myitsone and several other proposed hydroelectric projects.
China is on Myanmar’s northern border, and in 2015, shelling from neighboring Myanmar wounded five people in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan – cross-border fire that strained ties between the neighbors.
Beijing has been pressing for the resumption of the Chinese-backed project ever since. She has offered China a role as mediator, Myanmar officials involved in the talks said. “I will stand on the side of thoroughly rejecting the Myitsone dam project”, said U Kyaw Nyein, executive committee member of the Forest Resource Environment Development and Conservation Association, adding that he had concluded that the negative consequences of the project going forward outweighed the benefits for Myanmar.
He called on the two countries to boost cooperation in the economy, trade and agriculture, and to expand exchanges in culture, education and health.
USA -based Jamestown Foundation hailed Suu Kyi’s practical diplomacy, saying that the Suu Kyi administration will welcome China’s mutually beneficial investment.
Explaining the high level protocol to Suu Kyi, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang said “as is known to all, State Counsellor is ranked second only to the President among all the posts in the state organs of Myanmar”.
She is also looking to gradually expand economic cooperation with China as Myanmar transitions from a reclusive dictatorship to a democracy in order to rapidly develop her country’s poor infrastructure.
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said the trip was expected to help recalibrate bilateral relations under the new Myanmar government.
“Presently, China is promoting the Belt and Road Initiative and is further opening up to the outside world”.
Domestically, job creation and agricultural development were top priorities following her administration’s first 100 days in office, she said.
This shows that “the Myanmar government and you highly value our ties”, Li said at a reception at the Great Hall of the People.
Suu Kyi said Myanmar wants to promote continued development between ASEAN and China.
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With the Union Peace Conference, or 21 Century Panglong, slated for the 31 August she is also expected to raise the issue of Myanmar’s armed ethnic groups operating on the Sino-Myanmar border.
