Energy Cooperation Between Myanmar And China

In pace with their fast economic development, many countries energy needs keep getting more and more important every day. Because of its rich oil and natural gas resources, hydroelectric power, and mineral products, Myanmar’s geographical position is seen as highly strategic. It has thus recently attracted growing attention from China, the United States, Canada, India and ASEAN countries. On one hand, Myanmar, whose technological development and foreign investments have been limited for years by economical sanctions led by the United States, sees it as an obvious choice to develop cooperative relationships with foreign companies. On the other hand, inflation has caused the oil and gas’ prices to increase dramatically in China, who must now rely heavily on imports. This made it imperative for China to cooperate with its neighbors. As a result, cooperative projects between Myanmar and China have been constantly increasing in the last years.Projects such as recently constructed pipelines have been beneficial to both countries, but they still encountered considerable resistance. Indeed, cooperation between the two countries is not only limited to pure commercial and investments needs, it also touches upon many other issues regarding energy security, economic development, and environmental protection. As such, it involves significant political and economic interests. Cooperation between Myanmar and China also depends from other powers involved in Myanmar, which creates new challenges for China. If handled inappropriately, relations between Myanmar and other powers could in fact be quite detrimental to Chinese interest in the future. More specifically, cooperation with China has already been impeded by ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, which always pose the risk of deferring projects in progress. Furthermore, China also has to take into account the influence of other actors who just entered the game, such as the United States, India and ASEAN countries. Hence, if Myanmar and China’s government, as well as both countries’ companies, wish to obtain the economic and political benefits they cooperated for, they have to take into consideration those factors. China must not only lay stress on cultivating good relations with the government in power, it must also pay attention to demands coming from the people and respect cultural particularities, in order to facilitate the completion of already existing projects. When it comes to dealing with other foreign actors, both countries have to respect international rules in order to guarantee fair competition and promote the interests of both nations as much as possible.In sum, cooperation between Myanmar and China can bring benefits to both countries politically and economically, but also in matters of societal development. Nevertheless, the level to which both countries will be able to cooperate in the near future depends to a great extent on their abilities to avoid risks, to transform disadvantageous factors into advantageous ones, to work in a concerted way, and to succeed factors into advantageous ones, to work in a concerted way, and to succeed in resolving existing issues.