Why does China keep supporting Burma in the Rohingya crisis?

[The Ronin]

CHINA once again boycotted talks at the United Nations Security Council aimed at addressing the Rohingya refugee crisis taking place in Burma (Myanmar), diplomats told Reuters on Monday.

This is the latest in a long line of Chinese efforts to divert any course action aimed at solving the crisis, which saw more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims flee across the border to Bangladesh.

Not only has Beijing stopped any international intervention, it has also openly voiced support for the military’s efforts, saying Burma is merely “maintaining its domestic stability.”

The accusations against the Tatmadaw, another name for Burma’s military, have been building, with the UN going so far as accusing them of ethnic cleansing. The international condemnation has been almost universal – almost.

Beijing continues to hold strong, despite international pressure and mounting evidence of war crimes. So what is it about this Southeast Asian nation of 50 million that has China happily making apologies for genocide?

Strings attached protection
As the United States withdraws from the region, China sheltering Burma’s military and political leaders from international pressure draws them closer into Beijing’s orbit.

“The Rohingya crisis really creates an opportunity” for China with Burma, Yun Sun, an expert on Burma-China relations at the Washington-based Stimson Center, told The Wall Street Journal. “Now’s the time to show them who their real friends are.”

Predictably, it’s not for purely selfless reasons. Burma is a resource-rich neighbour and by extending the hand of friendship, China ensures its companies get first dibs after all other regional players have been scathing of the Tatmadaw’s actions.

This is already starting to pay dividends as Chinese companies are responsible for roughly a quarter of the country’s foreign direct investment. The Communist Party is also investing heavily in infrastructure projects – all of which now need protecting.

Both countries recently signed a deal to develop the huge China-funded Kyauk Phyu Special Economic Zone deep-sea port in the very state in which the Rohingya have faced persecution. While not in the volatile areas of Rakhine state, the threat of terrorism spilling over to parts where they have invested worries Beijing.

The port is key to regional connectivity and is a pillar of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is to act as the starting point of an oil-gas pipeline and railroad link to Yunnan state in China.

This is only the beginning with new high-speed rail lines, roads and industry expected to follow.

Clip the wings of international intervention
It’s no secret that Beijing likes governments to keep themselves to themselves, preferring a non-interventionist approach to internal affairs.

China’s fear is that, should the United Nations take a role in resolving and seeking justice in the case of the Rohingya, it will set a precedent for UN involvement in other border issues, of which China has no shortage.

One such conflict is in the northern reaches of Burma, where conflicts between the Tatmadaw and rebel groups have been raging along the Chinese border.

China’s view “is that there shouldn’t be any international interference in ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, because that might affect what’s happening at the border,” Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s East Asia director, told the Journal.

Despite flutters of wariness from Burma’s military over China’s mounting leverage in the country, the relationship has persisted.

China remains Burma’s number one trading partner, weathering the storm of the government’s pivot to western countries earlier this decade.

As China emerges as a superpower with jaw-dropping global ambitions, the proximity and strategic significance of Burma makes it a prime target for Chinese intervention.

https://asiancorrespondent.com/2018...3J3gUwoUmLb3p0fEfFOs9s2C8VDP22ZDgZUgKoZPSd94k

 

[dy1022]

response to :https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/bipa...us-genocide-label-of-myanmar-killings.592677/


VETO !!!
@Nilgiri



"BD can be one of the pivotal countries that can make sure that China stays contained in it's East Asian sphere.
A country like that must never be allowed to have too much power."



"I never seen more weird claim than they have in south china sea."

"It would be a global disaster if China one day replace United States as the global hegemony. Despite all the faults United States has, it is still a powerful bastion of liberal democracy. Whose fundamental values strive for democracy, rule of law, human rights, gender equality, racial and ethnic inclusiveness, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of protest and many other things which we can identify as the propellers of civilization. I am all for China achieving economic prosperity and average Chinese people enjoying a good life, but Chinese state, in it's current form should never be allowed to replace US as the most dominant power in the world. It's neighboring counties in East Asia should act as a bullwark checking the destructive power and influence of ruthless autocratic Chinese state."

 

[UKBengali]

Chinese are arrogant and diplomatically inept.

They have grown too big for their boots and the rest of Asia will bring them back into line.

 

[extra terrestrial]

Chinese are arrogant and diplomatically inept.

They have grown too big for their boots and the rest of Asia will bring them back into line.

Chinese are the masters of diplomacy. Hasina pissed them off by backtracking from the Sonadia project at the last moment on her visit to Beijing in 2014, yet China didn't utter a single word against Bangladesh.

The government revived the project and invited Xi Jinping to Dhaka in 2016 but Sonadia was kept outside the agenda. This time China was resolute and gave the go ahead to Myanmar who were longing for decades to start the massive anti-Rohingya operation in Rakhine.

Yes, there are so-called geo-political issues surrounding the Sonadia deep sea-port but the question is why would you promise something that you can't even deliver? What were those people in our Foreign Ministry or PMO doing that they couldn't even predict the possible reactions of the regional powers to this project? Are they even Bangladeshis? These people have just made our foreign policy a joke.

This whole Rohingya crisis is nothing but a failure of our foreign policy.

 

[TopCat]

Chinese are the masters of diplomacy. Hasina pissed them off by backtracking from the Sonadia project at the last moment on her visit to Beijing in 2014, yet China didn't utter a single word against Bangladesh.

The government revived the project and invited Xi Jinping to Dhaka in 2016 but Sonadia was kept outside the agenda. This time China was resolute and gave the go ahead to Myanmar who were longing for decades to start the massive anti-Rohingya operation in Rakhine.

Yes, there are so-called geo-political issues surrounding the Sonadia deep sea-port but the question is why would you promise something that you can't even deliver? What were those people in our Foreign Ministry or PMO doing that they couldn't even predict the possible reactions of the regional powers to this project? Are they even Bangladeshis? These people have just made our foreign policy a joke.

This whole Rohingya crisis is nothing but a failure of our foreign policy.

I think govt did the right thing regarding sonadia. Chinese understood bd's position. Besides the deal would not had flown anyways considerin the stake the chibese demand in port projects.

 

[Imran Khan]

as you guys don't know ????????let me guess its start from I finish on A

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Because Myanmar despite their pro-Western tilt is still a thousand million times more reliable than a backstabbing Bangladesh.

First Bangladesh backstabbed Pakistan in favor of India, then they backstabbed China on Sonadia port in favour of India/US. Now they are backstabbing the Rohingya by claiming that Myanmar is genociding them, yet they are still throwing them back to Myanmar, denying them basic refugee status, and even sealing the border so they can't escape.

 

[Homo Sapiens]

This article can shed some light. China is profiting from genocide and ethnic cleansing.

China seizes opportunity in Suu Kyi’s isolation

China's Wanbao Mining is pushing to expand its controversial Letpadaung copper mine, a project that pits the once revered, now embattled leader against her own people

By BERTIL LINTNER YANGON, DECEMBER 5, 2018 3:46 PM (UTC+8)

Protestors against the China-backed Letpadaung copper mine unfurl a banner in Yangon, Myanmar. Photo: Facebook


As Western governments weigh sanctions in punitive response to Myanmar’s recent rash of rights abuses against ethnic and religious minorities, China is taking full advantage of the country’s new era of international isolation to seek out new investment opportunities.

Myanmar Yang Tse Copper Limited, a subsidiary of the Beijing-based Wanbao Mining Limited, is now reportedly pursuing permission to carry out ground inspections for a possible copper mining site in a 100,000-acre large area in Monywa, west of the central city of Mandalay.

The dailyReport

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Wanbao, a subsidiary of China’s state-owned arms manufacturer China North Industries Corporation, or Norinco, operates mines in Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo and has operated in Myanmar since 2010.

It’s Myanmar operations, concentrated in the Letpadaung mining region, have been highly divisive and politically charged issue pitting locals against authorities, and even reportedly created divisions within the powerful military on pro- and anti-China lines.

Wanbao’s new exploration activities have the potential to put State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in a political firing line as perceptions gather her quasi-democratic government is increasingly receptive to Chinese interests as an economic hedge against new punitive measures from the West.

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (L) greets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on August 19, 2016. Photo: AFP/Pool/Rolex Dela Pena


The Chinese company’s previous mining activities at Letpaduang, a joint venture with the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, or UMEH, a company owned by the Myanmar military, sparked protests that were harshly suppressed by security forces, with local villagers and Buddhist monks suffering injuries from incendiary devices.

Suu Kyi first waded into the controversy in 2013, soon after becoming a member of parliament after spending years in house arrest under previous military regimes.

In an event that presaged her subsequent political turn towards protecting military interests, Suu Kyi urged farmers who had their lands confiscated to make way for the China-backed project to stop their protests because they were hurting the environment for foreign investment.

In a telling exchange, when Suu Kyi tried to explain to an agitated crowd at the site that the government had contractual obligations for the project to proceed, an angry female protester shouted back at Suu Kyi, saying, “all we had to eat was boiled rice and we voted for you, but you are not standing with us anymore.”

Suu Kyi, then widely adored across the nation as a pro-democracy icon, was reportedly shaken by the experience and quickly retreated to her car and left the area.

The impassioned people versus state protests have continued in perhaps the most potent example of popular pushback against perceived as exploitative Chinese investments in the country.

Protestors block a road leading to the Letpadaung mine in central Myanmar. Photo: Facebook
During the height of the protests in 2013, the then Chinese ambassador in Yangon, Li Junhua, claimed that the company had paid adequate compensation for the confiscated 3,200 acres to the displaced villagers.

But they have always claimed, and even told Suu Kyi during her visit to the mining site, that they are not interested in compensation and insist on maintaining their ancestral lands. They have also complained that reglious sites have been desecrated in the mining zone.

In December 2014, police shot and killed a female demonstrator near the mine. After her death, demonstrators clashed with police outside the Chinese embassy in Yangon.

In March last year, ten villagers were injured when police fired rubber bullets at protesters who were trying to block the road leading to the Letpadaung mine.

Despite the still boiling unrest, the Chinese company now wants to invest between US$6-10 million for an initial inspection of a much larger area around Kani, Yinmabin and Sarlingyi near the old mine. Any new project is bound to be met by wider protests, an issue Suu Kyi’s elected government will need to weigh carefully.

China’s rising role in Myanmar after the bloody campaign against Rohingya Muslims in western Rakhine state and the West’s condemnation of the carnage also raises the question of how much her government is willing to concede to Beijing.

Aung San Suu Kyi (C) and Myanmar Military Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing arrive (R) in Naypyitaw, Myanmar; March 30, 2016. Photo: Reuters/Ye Aung Thu/Pool


Myanmar’s moves towards a more open society, and the introduction of what appeared to be democratic reforms after elections in 2010 and 2015, were largely prompted by the military’s desire to lessen the nation’s dependence on China in the name of sovereignty.

That reliance became overwhelming when the country was subjected to debilitating Western sanctions and boycotts in the 1990s and early 2000s and China was one of the country’s few sources of foreign investment.

When previous President Thein Sein initiated that weening process in 2011, several Chinese projects were suspended or stalled. But Suu Kyi seems increasingly willing to reverse that trend as her government desperately seeks new sources of investment to lift a sagging economy.

Yet sources close to the still powerful military assert that many officers are wary of the increasingly pro-Chinese stance that Suu Kyi had recently adopted after — as she sees it — being let down by the West, once her most ardent supporters.

Given the new geopolitical reality that Myanmar now finds, the copper mining saga in Monywa could easily turn into an intra-government proxy conflict pitting Suu Kyi’s increasingly pro-China administration against a more China-skeptic military.

And the villagers at Letpadaung, now as ever, will be stuck mercilessly in the middle.
http://www.atimes.com/article/china-seizes-opportunity-in-suu-kyis-isolation/

 

[dy1022]

Chinese are the masters of diplomacy. Hasina pissed them off by backtracking from the Sonadia project at the last moment on her visit to Beijing in 2014, yet China didn't utter a single word against Bangladesh.

The government revived the project and invited Xi Jinping to Dhaka in 2016 but Sonadia was kept outside the agenda. This time China was resolute and gave the go ahead to Myanmar who were longing for decades to start the massive anti-Rohingya operation in Rakhine.

Yes, there are so-called geo-political issues surrounding the Sonadia deep sea-port but the question is why would you promise something that you can't even deliver? What were those people in our Foreign Ministry or PMO doing that they couldn't even predict the possible reactions of the regional powers to this project? Are they even Bangladeshis? These people have just made our foreign policy a joke.

This whole Rohingya crisis is nothing but a failure of our foreign policy.

Chinese are the masters of diplomacy. Hasina pissed them off by backtracking from the Sonadia project at the last moment on her visit to Beijing in 2014, yet China didn't utter a single word against Bangladesh.

The government revived the project and invited Xi Jinping to Dhaka in 2016 but Sonadia was kept outside the agenda. This time China was resolute and gave the go ahead to Myanmar who were longing for decades to start the massive anti-Rohingya operation in Rakhine.

Yes, there are so-called geo-political issues surrounding the Sonadia deep sea-port but the question is why would you promise something that you can't even deliver? What were those people in our Foreign Ministry or PMO doing that they couldn't even predict the possible reactions of the regional powers to this project? Are they even Bangladeshis? These people have just made our foreign policy a joke.

This whole Rohingya crisis is nothing but a failure of our foreign policy.

Well said
Truth and fact,

 

[UKBengali]

Because Myanmar despite their pro-Western tilt is still a thousand million times more reliable than a backstabbing Bangladesh.

First Bangladesh backstabbed Pakistan in favor of India, then they backstabbed China on Sonadia port in favour of India/US. Now they are backstabbing the Rohingya by claiming that Myanmar is genociding them, yet they are still throwing them back to Myanmar, denying them basic refugee status, and even sealing the border so they can't escape.

When did BD backstab Pakistan?

 

[extra terrestrial]

I think govt did the right thing regarding sonadia. Chinese understood bd's position. Besides the deal would not had flown anyways considerin the stake the chibese demand in port projects.

China Harbour Engineering Company opening an office in Dhaka months before Hasina's visit to Beijing in 2014 indicates the negotiations were on the final stage and the deal was set to be signed during the visit. Why didn't they protest against the supposed Chinese stakes in the port earlier?

The project was even included in the agenda of the meeting but was cancelled at the last moment during the visit. It was, in my opinion, quite amateur on our part; that's not how you act at this level.

 

[dy1022]

China Harbour Engineering Company opening an office in Dhaka months before Hasina's visit to Beijing in 2014 indicates the negotiations were on the final stage and the deal was set to be signed during the visit. Why didn't they protest against the supposed Chinese stakes in the port earlier?

The project was even included in the agenda of the meeting but was cancelled at the last moment during the visit. It was, in my opinion, quite amateur on our part; that's not how you act at this level.

Two multi-billion dollar Chinese seaports near critical Israeli sites are raising concerns over potential security issues and relations with Washington

An Israeli naval officer holds the mooring rope of the INS Tanin, a Dolphin AIP class submarine, on its arrival at a naval base in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Photo: AFP



China is constructing seaports at two sites where the US 6th Fleet deploys, in Haifa next to Israel’s main naval base and Ashdod near Tel Aviv, prompting concerns about China’s military potential in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East.



“The civilian [Chinese] port in Haifa abuts the exit route from the adjacent [Israeli] navy base, where the Israeli submarine fleet is stationed and which, according to foreign media reports, maintains a second-strike capability to launch nuclear missiles,” Israel’s Haaretz media reported.

“No one in Israel thought about the strategic ramifications,” Haaretz said in September.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Arleigh Burke visited Haifa on October 25 in support of the 6th Fleet which is headquartered in Naples, Italy.

Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) signed the Haifa contract in 2015, began construction in June, and is to operate the Bayport Terminal for 25 years starting from 2021.

SIPG signed memorandums of understanding with U.S. ports in Seattle, Washington in 2006 and Georgia Ports Authority in 2004, plus Barcelona, Spain, in 2006.

SIPG also works with European ports in Rotterdam, Hamburg and London, and two ports in Japan, its website said.

China Harbor Engineering, one of China’s biggest government-owned enterprises, is meanwhile constructing a port at Ashdod, 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Tel Aviv.

“At $3 billion, this is one of the biggest overseas investment projects in Israel, ever, and also one of the biggest for the Chinese company, China Harbor Engineering,” wrote Arthur Herman, senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute think tank in November.

“Ashdod on the Mediterranean coast is the destination of fully 90 percent of Israel’s international maritime traffic,” Herman said.

Ashdod’s current port hosted the USS Ross guided-missile destroyer in October which also supports “U.S. national security interests in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations,” a USS Ross public affairs officer said on the Navy’s website.

“This is an historic moment,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2017 when he joined Chinese officials to lay the cornerstone of the Ashdod port.

Israel’s Transportation Ministry and the Ports Authority permitted construction of the Chinese ports at Haifa and Ashdod “with zero involvement of the [Israeli] National Security Council and without the [Israeli] navy,” Haaretz said.

“The first [concern] is over Chinese control of strategic infrastructure and the possibility of espionage,” the London-based Economist magazine reported in October.

“Israeli submarines, widely reported to be capable of launching nuclear missiles, are docked there [at Haifa]. Yet the deal with the Chinese firm was never discussed by the cabinet or the national security council, a situation one [Israeli] minister described as astonishing,” the Economist said.

Trading routes
“There are skeptics in several Israeli political parties and among former national security officials, who warn of potential security issues and possible friction with the United States resulting from Chinese involvement in Israeli infrastructure projects,” wrote Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations and former deputy national security advisor to President George W Bush.

The ports form part of China’s international, multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

The Belt and Road project would link China with countries elsewhere in Asia, the Middle East and Europe along lucrative trading routes across land and sea, with Ashdod serving as a crucial port for seaborne trade with Europe, Abrams said.

China’s Haifa and Ashdod ports are part of “an ambitious trans-Asian strategy to pursue three key resources for China’s future greatness: petrochemicals, consumer markets, and advanced technology,” he said in his 2018 brief. Middle East oil and gas fuels China’s growth.

The Middle East would also offer a huge commercial market for purchasing Chinese exports, including consumer goods, electronics and other items. Gilad Cohen, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s deputy director general for Asia and the Pacific, is bullish on Chinese investments in Israel. “Recently there have been increasing warnings against allowing China to participate in projects and investments in Israel.”

Cohen said in October. “There are some who go as far as to deem any Chinese economic involvement in our region as a threat to our interests and a danger to our economic independence. These statements are damaging to relations between the countries.

“We are a country with confidence in its capabilities, unafraid of exposure to new markets, while we safeguard our security and strategic interests,” Cohen wrote in a published opinion piece headlined: “How Close to China is Too Close for Israel?”

Prime Minister Netanyahu meanwhile hosted China’s Vice President Wang Qishan along with Jack Ma, CEO and founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, in Jerusalem in October.

Their summit “reflects the growing ties between our countries, our economies, our peoples,” Netanyahu said.

In 2017, Netanyahu visited Beijing and met Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992 when Deng Xiaoping and Yitzhak Rabin were in power, and continues to support Israel during votes in the United Nations.

 

[zectech]

China should have been protecting North Korean interests, not Burma's. Even with China's partnership with Burma.

But I am sure China got blackmailed into abandoning the PDRK.

Kim is not doing anything wrong and still gets abandoned by Russia and China.

I am a supporter of China, not here, but I will not condemn China, neither condone, they are protecting their allies/friends who went astray. The West who complains are the perpetrators of violence like the Burmese are. Having the US on the Security Council is worse than having Burma on the Security Council.

China is the best and most honest and most moral on the Security Council, the rest are lying thieves and the genociders and terrorists, including Putin Russia. First in Chechnya, now the arrests of Muslim Tatars for being too free thinking.

China is the best of the available options despite friendship with Burma. What are we to do, go into bomb bunkers for 100 years and hope someone better than China comes along? The rest of the "super powers" are terrorists.

 

[zectech]

And if China is sticking with their partners during this trade war, it should be good indication that China will defend the JCPOA and hold fast to their friendship with Pakistan if any difficulties arise.

The Saudis can blockade and cause famine and disease while the West sends more and more bombs to Saudi Arabia.

The War in Yemen did not stop the Saudi support, it was the killing of a journalist tracked by Isreali software by the Saudis or the West. Dead children in Yemen was not enough for Westerners, they kept shipping bombs.

You can sympathize with the Chinese who were told PDRK were a threat to world peace and need to be taken out (a lie told to China), were told Iran's JCPOA was bad for world peace (a lie), told they are being too heavy handed with Uighurs, informed for the first time that China was putting spyware on chips made in China, something China was not aware of because it was fake news, "vilified" by Trump. China had enough of believing Western lies and going along with the West. So when the liars come up to China and say we need to condemn the mistreatment in Burma, what do you do to liars, you ignore them and do not pay them any attention.

 

[bluesky]

China Harbour Engineering Company opening an office in Dhaka months before Hasina's visit to Beijing in 2014 indicates the negotiations were on the final stage and the deal was set to be signed during the visit. Why didn't they protest against the supposed Chinese stakes in the port earlier?

The project was even included in the agenda of the meeting but was cancelled at the last moment during the visit. It was, in my opinion, quite amateur on our part; that's not how you act at this level.

You are talking out of context. A Treaty is not a Treaty unless it is signed by the concerned parties. China Harbour Engineering was playing its politics at the insistence of the Chinese govt. It was not supposed to come without first getting a Contract. China is helping Burma because it needs gas from there.

What benefits BD can get by giving extra leverage to China? It is time that BD plays a strong Rohingya role in Arakan with the help of US-Japan axis, create an autonomous region there and deny China the gas fields and deep seaport. BD is weak, but the local population of any region is not weak. Another strength of Arakan is it is geographically separated from Burma by the Yommu mountains at the east.