Chinese Official Threatens Myanmar

[Galaxy]

Chinese Official Threatens Myanmar

OCTOBER 4, 2011

BEIJING—The head of a major Chinese company behind a controversial dam in Myanmar said the project's suspension by the Myanmar government last week was a surprise that "will lead to a series of legal issues," in the latest sign of frayed relations between the two countries.

China Power Investment Corp. President Lu Qizhou, in an interview with the state-run Xinhua news agency on Monday, said he learned of the suspension of construction of the $3.6 billion Myitsone dam project "through the media and I was totally astonished."

The comments suggest the dispute could linger even as China seeks more projects in Myanmar, an ally with strategic importance to Beijing. It isn't clear how the company might press legal claims, however, given the limited nature of the legal systems in both countries.

Officials of the two governments couldn't be reached to comment.

On Sunday, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry said Myanmar's government should protect the rights of Chinese companies there, highlighting the political nature of such a project.

The dam, affecting the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar's north, would have flooded an area roughly the size of Singapore.

The project has been unpopular in Myanmar. In communities in Myanmar's Kachin state, guerrilla groups have clashed recently with the country's armed forces, and the Myitsone dam was viewed by local residents as a way for the government to resettle ethnic groups.

President Thein Sein on Friday said construction should be suspended, saying the project was against the will of the people—a decision that came as a surprise to many observers, given its potential to anger China, the politically isolated Myanmar government's most important strategic ally.

China needs the alliance in part because of Myanmar's geographic closeness with regional rival India and for its access to the Bay of Bengal. China and Myanmar are building an oil and gas pipeline through Myanmar and into southwest China, in an effort by Chinese officials to diversify fuel sources.

The episode suggests Myanmar may be willingness to move out of China's shadow as it seeks greater favor among Western governments.

A new Myanmar government was put in power last year, in the nation's first multiparty election in two decades, though foreign governments widely considered the vote to be a fraud. Myanmar has been trying to convince foreign leaders it is on a path of democratic reform.

Large infrastructure projects are a common way Beijing looks to win diplomatic favor in the developing world, and its companies are building hydroelectric dams in Southeast Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

In the interview, Mr. Lu defended hydroelectric power, going as far as to mention the Hoover Dam powering the city of Las Vegas as an example of the power source's success.

Separately Monday, state-run China National Petroleum Corp. donated $1.32 million to build schools in regions along its oil and gas pipelines to China, according to Xinhua.

Chinese Official Warns of Legal Action Over Myanmar Dam - WSJ.com

 

[Galaxy]

Strings of pearls is turning upside down.

Vietnam, India, Japan, SK, Myanmar, Philippines. :thumb:

 

[niceguy2011]

Strings of pearls is turning upside down.

Vietnam, India, Japan, SK, Myanmar, Philippines. :thumb:

Group of lamb.LOL

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Digging their own grave..

 

[Ray]

I wonder if that would be threatening if the Chinese officially merely stated that there would be legal issue.

If a contract is suspended beyond the clauses that allow suspension, then it is obvious that the construction company would have to move court to ensure that they are adequately compensated.

Or have I missed something?

 

[Ray]

Group of lamb.LOL

They maybe lambs, but surely they are not paper tigers like China.

One contract gone sour and to imagine the whole world has collapsed!!

As Mao said, such people are frogs in the well.

 

[thakur_ritesh]

The episode suggests Myanmar may be willingness to move out of China's shadow as it seeks greater favor among Western governments.

precisely the point india has been putting across to the western capitals, hope these chaps listen up and adhere. if india and the west can root out the chinese from myanmar, its going to be the biggest strategic coup in the region by the two.

 

[pmaitra]

Group of lamb.LOL

You are the LOL guy who keeps calling us lambs. You did this the last time. Such behaviour is not exactly what the forum rules recommend, but I am not offended, because you are betraying your frustrations.

BTW, I think lambs are cute. How about you?

 

[SpArK]

A company head doesnt represent China.

But keeping Myanmar as much away from China is of utmost importance to us.

And the following news are suggesting the same.

Myanmar dam suspension tests vital China ties | Reuters
China's polished exploitation of isolated Myanmar - Hindustan Times


But Chinese aree known to make amends once an issue get internationalized..

Also there is a huge neglect in our border side.. I cam across a news article which shows the grave dangers..



Where China and India merge


One night in 2001, a 24-year-old Chinese citizen hailing from a remote border town on the southern Silk Road muttered a prayer and darted into Mizoram when the sentry at the Indo-Myanmar border let down his guard. "I told Indians that I'm from Nagaland."They never checked said the bespectacled middlee school dropout revealed to the Hindustan Times in a mountainous frontier Chinatown called Ruili which is rimmed on three sides by Myanmar.

The man introduced himself with two identities, a Chinese name and a Myanmarese name, spoke fluently in both languages, and marked the time in both nations. In India, he invented a third identity.

Tan (full name withheld) stayed undetected without a visa in India, passing himself off as a 21-year-old to study in Bangalore. He regularly traversed back and forth from India to China through Myanmar --- for six years until 2007. He complained about the cost of the weeklong journey by bus, train and on foot: Rs 5,000 one-way.

It's a journey no Indian dares attempt in reverse: from Mizoram to Mandalay to Ruili. This rural outpost has transformed from an underworld den of heroin and arms dealers into China's strategic gateway to India and the Bay of Bengal with new cross-border highways, railroad and ports connecting it Myanmar.


India's defence ministry this year warned that China has completed roads to all passes on the disputed border. In Tibet, the last dirt track in a county bordering India is being paved, helping meet a goal of extending roads in the Himalayan region from 58,000 km to 70,000 km by 2015.


Tan, a devotee of a state-backed church in his Chinese hometown, prayed to Jesus as he crept into the northeast state. He was not alone. They were a group of eight people from China and Myanmar who vanished inside India through the porous northeast. The crumbling roads may have impeded an advancing army but not the bands of infiltrators or dealers peddling arms to insurgents.

Rebuilding the northeastern roads may in fact make India's borders more secure while bringing the economic opportunities denied to the region.


On the Stilwell Road
"The mountains on this side belong to Miandian (Chinese name for Myanmar) and the mountains on that side are Chinese," explained my driver on the final lap of the restored World War-II China-Burma highway. The nearest Chinese airport to the Myanmar border is at Mangshi city, a two-hour drive on two black-topped lanes hugging a misty mountainside and paddy fields.


The landscape, bisected by a line of motorcycles and overloaded three-wheelers rumbling alongside villages and ramshackle huts, looks like a postcard from northeast Assam. But the Indian stretch of the 1,739-km road built by General Joseph Stilwell and Allied forces from Ledo in Assam to boost Chinese resistance against Japanese invaders is still a jungle trail even though the Indo-Myanmar side of the road has been rebuilt.


The border police sitting on stools at an unmarked checkpost near the Stilwell Road Wetland Park flagged down the taxi and peered in from the windows. Unlike Tan's unchecked passage to India, my passport was photographed as they quizzed me.


"We have a saying that if you want to get rich, first build roads," said Ren Jia, president of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences in Kunming, the capital of southwest Yunnan province. "We understand why India is not willing to open this road. Stilwell Road is a symbol of cooperation between China, India and Myanmar. We hope it can again link us. When there is a road there is trade."


Yunnan, a hinterland of 26 ethnic minorities, is now being linked by trans-Asian rail and highways to its neighbours Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam through Kunming and Ruili.


To drive on China's side of the Stilwell Road, take the flight from Beijing to Kunming, where the Ledo road ended. The three-hour flight from Beijing to Kunming traverses almost the same distance as Beijing to Urumqi, capital of northwest Xinjiang. Kunming and Urumqi are closer to Myanmar and Pakistan than to most Chinese provinces.


"Chinese writings reveal that Pakistan and Myanmar have now acquired the same place in China's grand strategy in the 21st century that was occupied by Xinjiang (New Territory) and Xizang (Western Treasure House, that is, Tibet)," said Mohan Malik, professor of Asian security at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii. "Pakistan is perceived as China's new Xinjiang and Myanmar as China's Xizang in economic, military, and strategic terms."




Border boomtown


The two-lane highway expands to six yawning lanes as it enters China's final frontier on the Myanmar border.


The paddy fields in Ruili where locals grew their own rice have given way to a port and markets selling Myanmarese timber and jade. A railroad from Ruili is snaking toward Myanmar's western port city Kyaukphyu. Chinese engineers are also building a 200-km road on the Myanmar side of the border, besides ports, highways and bridges. A railway from Kunming through Laos and Myanmar to Thailand and a China-Myanmar-Bangladesh road network are in the works.


"We're going to build international highways, railways, water routes, oil and gas channels and make Ruili a pilot city in opening-up," announced the Yunnan governor in June. Authorities brag that their port will be as busy as Shenzhen.


Strategists like Malik point out that the north-south transport corridor along the Irrawaddy River will give Beijing entry into the Indian Ocean and serve military objectives in the event of a conflict with India or the Taiwan Straits, or if a naval blockade is imposed through the Malacca Straits. "Historically, whenever there was conflict between Chinese and Indian interests," he said, "Rangoon gave greater importance to Chinese interests. The Myanmarese dare not antagonise China and they don't fear India."


In Ruili, the Chinese exporters and Myanmarese increasingly depend on each other. Despite the massive infrastructure for a place with under 300.000 residents, the only economic movement is trade in raw materials sourced from Ruili's Myanmar ghettos and marked-up products exported to the world. The town has no university. This reporter never saw a foreign tourist even in the biggest hotel. Residents go to Kunming or Mandalay to graduate. The Chinese in Ruili speak Myanmarese, but not English, and cross their border with special permits. They also trade parcels and messages over the side barricades or simply squeeze through the gaps from one regime to another.


http://www.hindustantimes.com/Where-China-and-India-merge/Article1-752584.aspx

 

[Armand2REP]

China losing influence in their own backyard.

 

[The Messiah]

Strings of pearls is turning upside down.

Vietnam, India, Japan, SK, Myanmar, Philippines. :thumb:

chicoms

 

[agentperry]

it was bound to happen. i have sources who tells me how good relation between india and burma are. when i see people calling burma a chinese proxy sometime back i just felt pity on them. they dont know burmese compulsion in dealing with china.
India is following same model to deal with both burma and bd, we kill your separatist and you kill ours. in all there is a favorable opinion for home govt among the people and both are happy.
multi modal transport for linking indian ne with bay of bengal, ppl do you all realize the gravity of this project, this means relying on burma for long. trust between both countries is high. chinese dam building cant effect our relations and now even the dam is not coming up. chinese 3.6 billion dollars are now a burmese shitting place.