China’s ambassador to Myanmar met on Friday with residents forced to relocate for the construction of the controversial China-backed Myitsone Dam project in Kachin state in a bid to gain local support for the restart of the project, a local resident and state official said.
China wants to resume construction of the U.S. $3.6-billion hydropower project, which was temporarily halted by former President Thein Sein in 2011, Ambassador Hong Liang told Kachin Chief Minister Khent Aung and his cabinet during his first visit to the state.
Work on the project, which was first approved under the previous military-backed government, was stopped amid fervent opposition because of the environmental destruction it was predicted to cause, as well as the huge flooding area it would create.
Opponents also cited the dislocation of people living nearby, proximity to a geographical fault line, and unequal share of electricity output for Myanmar.
Under the investment deal, about 90 percent of the electricity produced by the dam would go to southern China’s Yunnan province.
China Power Investment Corporation (CPI), which is building the dam, has provided new homes for the roughly 3,000 villagers who were forcibly relocated because of the dam project, although some have returned to their old dwellings after reporting leaks in the new structures when it rained.
Hong and members of CPI visited displaced residents— some of whom bore placards reading “No Myitsone Dam”—to talk to them about the hydropower construction project.
‘Still against it’
“We heard the Chinese ambassador and about 40 CPI officials were coming to visit us,” protestor Ja Gang told RFA’s Myanmar Service. “We know they are about to resume the project. Now they are saying this is for the development of the area. We are very afraid of [those words].”
“We know they’ve come about the project,” she said. “We were and still are against it.”
China’s official Xinhua news agency, however, ran a report in Burmese saying the purpose of the visit was to observe the development of areas in Kachin state, a region important in Sino-Myanmar relations.
Earlier on Friday, Hong and the delegation addressed the Kachin state legislature about plans to continue the project.
“He said he wants to resume the project if the people agree to it,” said state environment minister H La Aung. “We replied that we would ask the people what they want before we resume it, since we are a democratic country. We think our government will answer after a careful survey of public opinion on the project.”
‘Important cooperation project’
Myanmar’s new National League for Democracy (NLD) government has yet to decide whether to let CPI, one of China’s largest state-owned electricity producers, continue building the 6,000-megawatt dam along the Irrawaddy River.
In March, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told a news conference that the dam is an “important cooperation project” and that its contract terms are still in force, Reuters reported.
But State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi has been one of the Myitsone Dam project’s most vocal opponents.
Last November around the time of national elections which her NLD party won, she assured the Chinese that she wanted to continued friendly relations between the two nations and welcomed Chinese investment in Myanmar, as long as investors won the trust of the Myanmar people.
Chinese-backed companies are the largest foreign investors in Myanmar, but their heavy-handed tactics in exploiting Myanmar’s natural resources and building large infrastructure projects have sparked vehement public opposition.
Reported by Kyaw Myo Min and Zin Mar Win for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.