In Burma (also known as Myanmar), thousands of locals turned out for a protest against the construction of a Chinese-backed dam, just days before the country’s top leader is set to visit Beijing.
Dam Project
Burma’s former military junta inked the $3.6 billion deal for the hydropower project located on the Irrawaddy River in 2009, according to Reuters, with Burma’s military-linked Asia World Co. and China’s state-owned utility company China Power Investment Corp. tasked with its construction.Work on the dam was suspended in September 2011 by then-Burmese president Thein Sein after public protests. At the time, Aung San Suu Kyi, before she became the leader of the current quasi-civilian government in Burma, was one of the voices of opposition. Suu Kyi once said the dam would threaten the flow of the Irrawaddy River, and force the relocation of more than 10,000 people from 63 nearby villages, according to Reuters.
But after Suu Kyi became head of the ruling National League for Democracy party and the effective prime minister of the country, Beijing began to exact pressure to resume the dam’s construction.
Most recently, in November 2018, the magazine reported that the Chinese regime wanted the project to be packaged as part of its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, and conveyed the message that other OBOR projects in Burma wouldn’t proceed unless the dam is restarted.
Frontier Myanmar reported that Beijing hasn’t publicly linked the dam project to OBOR, “acknowledgement, perhaps, that the project remains deeply unpopular and could potentially tarnish the image” of the initiative.
While Suu Kyi has remained silent on whether the project will resume, she did say in March that it’s important for her government to uphold investment projects approved by the junta, or investors might view her government as unreliable.Duwa Gumgrawng Awng Hkam, leader of the Kachin Democratic Party, told RFA in February that he considered Beijing’s push to have the Burmese government restore the project “an act of bullying.”
At the most recent protest, local resident Daung Kun called the project “a time bomb that could someday kill and wipe out people in Kachin state without a shot being fired.”
One Belt, One Road
Beijing considers the Myitsone dam a key element to its other OBOR projects in Burma, according to a January analysis article published by online news site The Irrawaddy.China wants the electricity generated from the dam to power its OBOR projects in Burma, including three economic cooperation zones located in the border areas of Kachin and the nearby state of Shan, as well as an industrial park in Namjim, a village in Kachin.
Another reason for the push to build the dam is that Beijing may be intentionally creating a distraction from other investments in Burma. The Irrawaddy reported that locals have claimed that their lands were confiscated to make room for projects related to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), but Chinese-Burmese operators have not paid them sufficient compensation. Similar complaints have dogged the Shwe oil and gas pipeline project connecting Burma’s western state of Rakhine with Yunnan, while fishermen also say they have lost their livelihoods as a result of the construction.
Beijing and Burma signed a memorandum of understanding for CMEC in September 2018 as part of OBOR. It includes plans for a railway and highway that will connect Yunnan’s capital of Kunming to the Burmese cities of Muse and Mandalay, which are, in turn, linked to Burma’s port of Kyaukpyu facing the Indian Ocean.
China’s official OBOR website states that the Shwe pipeline, Kyaukpyu port, and CMEC are all designed to reduce China’s dependence on traveling the Strait of Malacca to transport energy imports from the Middle East.