ABSTRACT
At present, there continues to be a lack of substantive research on China-Myanmar relations. Many related studies that emerged during the Aung San Suu Kyi regime lack a comprehensive understanding of the deeper issues in Myanmar and the Aung San Suu Kyi regime’s policy toward China. Furthermore, first-hand information obtained from field research is quite limited. Therefore, the specific details of Myanmar’s China policy have not been fully revealed; many studies in this area have only scratched the surface of the problem. For example, it has been pointed out that the Aung San Suu Kyi regime’s policies toward China were friendly on the surface, but in fact, many projects progressed slowly, and some megaprojects that China expected to see realized were never approved. While these facts are not in dispute, the conclusions that have been drawn were too narrow, as they were based on a lack of inside information about why Aung San Suu Kyi’s regime delayed Belt and Road initiative (BRI) megaprojects backed by Chinese interests. This chapter seeks to address this gap in the research. In what follows, the chapter first presents an overview of the characteristics of Chinese BRI megaprojects and how they are affected by Myanmar’s political regimes, with a specific focus on the rule of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). It then looks at three individual cases—the China-Myanmar cross-border railway, the Kyaukpyu Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and deep-sea port, and New Yangon City—to provide more detailed insights.
