Xi Gives Min Aung Hlaing Full State Visit
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- Min Aung Hlaing began a five-day state visit to China on June 16, where he meets President Xi Jinping — the highest level of diplomatic engagement, following his talks with PM Narendra Modi in India last month.
- China is Myanmar's top trading partner and investor, anchoring its influence through Belt and Road projects including a cross-country oil and gas pipeline and a deep-sea port, and has even brokered ceasefires along its border with ethnic armies.
- The Myanmar civil war has killed more than 93,000 people and displaced more than 3.7 million since the February 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government.
- Myanmar's military engineered a December-January election that excluded major opposition, paving the way for Min Aung Hlaing to become president — an outcome the source describes as widely condemned.
- Min Aung Hlaing's delegation includes the chief ministers of Kachin and Shan states, both bordering China, signaling that border trade and the $3.6 billion Myitsone Dam — shelved in 2011 — will be on the agenda.
- Analyst David Mathieson said China's interests center on rare earths, infrastructure, mining, and securing an economic corridor to the Indian Ocean — not federalism or democracy.
- The visit is shadowed by China's recent arrest of Min Zin, a prominent American scholar of Myanmar, on suspicion of espionage, which Crisis Group's Richard Horsey said will draw added focus.
Why it matters: Min Aung Hlaing gains the highest-level diplomatic cover — a Xi-hosted state visit — at a moment when China sees the West retreating from Myanmar after the 2021 coup. Beijing trades that legitimacy for access to Kachin State's heavy rare earth belt, the stalled $3.6 billion Myitsone Dam, and a corridor to the Indian Ocean.
