As the National League for Democracy (NLD) prepares to take over the reins of government in Myanmar, uncertainty is mounting over the fate of several China-backed infrastructure projects there.

Myanmar activists rally against the Myitsone dam project in 2011

Foremost among these is the $3.6 billion Myitsone hydro-power project in Myanmar’s Kachin province. In September 2011, the quasi-military government of President Thein Sein suspended the project following massive protests by Kachin activists.

The incoming NLD government will have to decide on the project’s fate.

There is little clarity on the NLD’s foreign policy. The party and its leaders were reluctant in throwing light on this during the campaign for the November 2015 general elections.

Some have drawn attention to NLD leader Suu Kyi’s proximity to western governments to argue that the NLD government will tilt towards the West and that an early fallout of this would be a decision cancelling the Myitsone project.

The decision on the Myitsone project will not be easy. Myanmar’s geographic proximity to China, its extreme dependence on it as well as the potential ‘spoiler’ role that China could adopt in fuelling ethnic conflagrations in conflicts along their shared border are likely to make the Myanmar government cautious and avoid drawing Beijing’s ire beyond a point.

Besides, a blanket cancelling of the project would raise the hackles of the Myanmar military. Several military officials are believed to have struck deals with the Chinese in this project. The NLD will prefer avoiding their wrath as a delicate political transition lies ahead.

On the other hand, the NLD government will have to respond to public sentiment on the ground. China’s domination of their economy is deeply resented in Myanmar and the Myitsone project epitomizes everything that was wrong with the Sino-Myanmar relationship that blossomed following international isolation in the 1990s.

Over the decades, it resulted in China emerging as Myanmar’s top investor, second largest trade partner and top military supplier. The partnership brought little benefit to the Myanmar masses, however. The Myitsone project deal, for instance, envisages supply of 90% of the power generated to China. However, it is the local population that will have to bear the economic and social costs of the project, including displacement, damage to environment and ecology.

Should the NLD government give the green signal to this iniquitous deal, it will be giving its seal of approval to the asymmetric, extractive and exploitative nature of Sino-Myanmar deals and the larger bilateral relationship as well.

What position is Suu Kyi likely to take on the controversial power project?

Suu Kyi has shown herself to be a pragmatic politician. She may feel closer to the West but she is unlikely to halt projects simply because they are Chinese. As head of a parliamentary panel probing the $1 billion Leptadaung copper mine project in 2013, she recommended its reinstating, despite local opposition to it on the ground that shutting it down would turn away foreign investors.

“We have to get along with [China] whether we like it or not,” she told villagers opposed to the project.

A similar cautious approach is likely to guide her decision on the Myitsone project. She will take the middle path.

While avoiding cancelling the project, the NLD government will seek re-negotiation of the contract details in a way that it is less unfavorable to Myanmar.

Last week, U Hantha Myint, the head of the NLD’s economics committee, told Agence France Presse that the NLD is considering a redesign of the project. Its proximity to an earthquake fault line is among the issues that would be addressed to reduce risk. Instead of building a dam at Myitsone, “we can build other dams upstream,” he said.

Of course, the NLD government could postpone a decision on the project’s fate. But it cannot put this off indefinitely as the interest on the disbursed capital is growing. If reviving the project on terms that are more favorable to Myanmar is not possible, the NLD government would do well to not defer the decision endlessly as the costs of cancellation are mounting.

However, given Myanmar’s importance to China’s economic and geo-strategic interests and the fact that unlike in the past 25 years when the junta had few options, the NLD government does not lack for economic suitors overseas, China will move cautiously on the Myitsone project.

With regard to the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone project, for instance, it is working to reduce public opposition to the project. Locals are being provided with training to make them employable on the project.

The question is whether such small steps like skill training to locals will be enough to calm the tidal wave of Myanmarese anger with China’s exploitation of their country.

Dr. Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore, India who writes on South Asian political and security issues. She can be reached at sudha.ramachandran@live.in

(Copyright 2016 Asia Times Holdings Limited, a duly registered Hong Kong company. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

At least 16 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a bomb blew up inside a bus in Peshawar, the main city of northwest Pakistan, officials said, with the toll expected to rise.

Pakistani volunteers move an injured blast victim to a hospital in Peshawar

The explosion took place in Saddar, a busy shopping district, as the bus was picking up government workers to take them to their offices.

“At least 16 people were killed and more than 24 were wounded in a blast on a government employees’ bus,” senior police official Mohammad Kashif Zulfiqar said.

Another police official and hospital officials also confirmed the incident and casualties. Read More

North Korea’s supreme court sentenced American student Otto Warmbier, who was arrested while visiting the country, to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state, China’s Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

US student Otto Warmbier was detained in North Korea in January

Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was detained by the North in January for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel in Pyongyang and had confessed to crimes against the state, North Korean media said previously.

Warmbier, who is from Wyoming, Ohio, and was 21 at the time of his arrest, told a media conference in Pyongyang last month that his crime “is very severe and pre-planned.”

He was at the end of a five-day New Year’s group tour of North Korea when he was delayed at airport immigration before being taken away by officials, according to the tour operator that had arranged the trip. Read More

U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump won a crucial contest in Florida on Tuesday, knocking rival Marco Rubio out of the race, but lost Ohio to John Kasich in a mixed result that set the stage for a long, bitter nominating fight.

Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign ended after he was beaten in his home state by Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump won in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina dealt a blow to Bernie Sanders’s insurgent bid.

Trump, a businessman who hoped a sweep of five states would put him on the path to the nomination, now faces a three-way struggle with Kasich, the Ohio governor, and Ted Cruz, a conservative U.S. senator from Texas, that could lead to a showdown at the party’s convention in Cleveland in July.

Kasich’s win in Ohio gave new hope to establishment Republicans battling to deny Trump the nomination and block him from capturing the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.

“We have to bring our party together,” a restrained Trump, 69, said in Palm Beach, Florida, as the results rolled in. He congratulated Rubio on his campaign but did not mention Kasich or Cruz. Read More

Kane Williamson’s gamble to compromise on speed and pick three specialist spinners paid off as New Zealand humbled hosts India by 47 runs in a spin-dominated Super 10 contest of the World Twenty20 on Tuesday.

New Zealand’s Ish Sodhi (on the ground) is congratulated by his teammates after he took the wicket of India’s Ravindra Jadeja

Opting to bat first, New Zealand posted 126-7 in the Group Two contest on a prodigiously turning track at Nagpur’s VCA Stadium, seemingly a below-par total against the host nation who are famed for their proficiency against spin bowling.

New Zealand’s three-pronged spin attack, however, ensured it was more than enough as Mitchell Santner (4-11), Nathan McCullum (2-15) and the Indian-born Ish Sodhi (3-18) wrecked the hosts who folded for 79 in 18.1 overs.

Williamson said it was not an easy decision to drop the pace duo of Tim Southee and Trent Boult to accommodate the spinners.

“Obviously that was tough, they are world class bowlers,” the Kiwi captain said. Read More

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for murdering a Muslim preacher in Bangladesh, an online group that monitors extremist activity said on Tuesday (Mar 15), the latest killing declared by the militant group in the South Asian nation.

Islamic State banner

Violence has surged in recent months in the Muslim-majority country, but the government has rejected Islamic State’s claims, blaming the violence instead on homegrown militant groups.

The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said Islamic State had claimed to have killed the man late on Monday in Jhenaidah, a district about 161 km west of Dhaka, the capital.

“Soldiers of the caliphate in Bangladesh were able to assassinate the polytheist apostate Hafidh Abdul Razzaq, one of the top preachers for the Rafidha religion,” SITE quoted the group as saying.

Although the statement called the victim a member of the Rafidha religion, or the Shi’ite Muslim minority group, police identified the dead man as a homeopathic doctor, Abdul Razzaq, 45, and denied that he was a preacher or a Shi’ite. Read more

China’s Anbang Insurance Group Co has emerged from near obscurity 18 months ago to sign deals worth more than $30 billion, moving into the big league of global real estate and finance.

The Beijing-based firm has offered $12.8 billion for U.S. hotel operator Starwood (HOT.N) and also agreed this month to pay Blackstone Group (BX.N) $6.5 billion for Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc, whose 16 luxury properties include the Four Seasons Washington D.C.

Established in 2004 as an automotive and property insurer by chairman Wu Xiaohui, a native of China’s entrepreneurial coastal city Wenzhou, Anbang is looking to use its 1.65 trillion yuan ($253 billion) in assets to transform into a worldwide investor.

“Anbang will have a global footprint. In 10 years, Anbang will have companies on all the world’s continents,” Wu, who is 49 and married to Deng Zhuorui, a granddaughter of Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping, told students at Harvard University last year.

Business associates describe Wu as passionate, impatient and very ambitious. He often travels by private jet accompanied by a retinue of assistants.

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel

His acquisition strategy is underpinned by an aggressive pursuit of yield-producing companies, those business associates say, funded by cash from selling insurance products and other sources.

In October 2014, Anbang agreed to pay $1.95 billion for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, a move Wu said brought the insurer “extra brand recognition” and business opportunities.

Last year, Anbang agreed to buy U.S. insurer Fidelity & Guaranty Life (FGL.N) for $1.6 billion, and paid around $1 billion for South Korea’s Tong Yang Life Insurance Co (082640.KS). It has also bought control of Fidea, a Belgium based insurer, and the Belgian banking operations of Dutch insurer Delta Lloyd. It is in talks to buy Allianz’s (ALVG.DE) South Korean operations.

At home, Anbang has a leading stake in China Minsheng Banking Corp Ltd (600016.SS)(1988.HK), the country’s biggest private lender, and is a significant shareholder in China Vanke Co (000002.SZ)(2202.HK), the largest residential property developer. Read more

Skeptics of North Korea’s nuclear threat, and there are many, have long clung to two comforting thoughts.

While the North has the bomb, it doesn’t have a warhead small enough to put on a long-range rocket. And it certainly doesn’t have a re-entry vehicle to keep that warhead from burning up in the atmosphere before it could reach a target like, as it has suggested before, Manhattan.

North Korea on Tuesday suggested it will soon show the world it has mastered both technologies.

That would require a huge jump in the North’s suspected nuclear capabilities, so it may be just the latest case of Pyongyang saying with vitriolic propaganda something it cannot demonstrate in tests. But if it delivers, it will put to rest one other comforting thought: that it’s safe for policymakers in Washington and elsewhere to take North Korea’s claims as mainly just bluster.

“We have proudly acquired the re-entry technology, possessed by a few countries styling themselves as military powers, by dint of self-reliance and self-development,” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying. The authoritarian country’s state-run media reported he made the comment after meeting scientists and technicians, following what it said was a successful ground test of a re-entry vehicle.

The report said Kim ordered the commencement of preparations for a “nuclear warhead explosion test” and test-firings of “several kinds of ballistic rockets able to carry nuclear warheads” to be conducted soon.

As with all such reports, it’s hard to separate Pyongyang’s wishful thinking from the current reality.

North Korea’s most likely candidate for an intercontinental ballistic missile is generally known as the KN-08 — in North Korea it’s called the Hwasong. The three-stage rocket has an estimated range of 5,000-6,000 kilometers (3,100-3,700 miles), longer if modified further.

That range would be ample for attacks on U.S. military bases in Japan, but not the U.S. mainland. A militarized version of the rocket used to put a North Korean satellite into orbit last month is believed to have — potentially — a much longer range that could reach the U.S.

A new version of the KN-08 was displayed at a military parade in October. IHS Jane’s Defense weekly said it featured a smaller and blunter warhead shape “that could confirm U.S. intelligence assessments and North Korean claims of success in miniaturizing its nuclear warheads.”

But the Pentagon has often expressed incredulity over the reliability of the KN-08 because North Korea has never tested it “end-to-end” — meaning from launch through re-entry and warhead delivery — to prove it works. Read more

By Harry Kazianis

Where were you when the towers fell?

In just a few months’ time, such questions will burn up the internet and social media as America once again marks the tragedy that is 9/11—fifteen years ago this year.

I certainly know where I was—sitting at a local breakfast hub back in my hometown of Cranston, Rhode Island, with my soon to be wife—preparing to devour the loveliest stack of pancakes, when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Instantly, everyone’s eyes were locked onto the TV screen. I thought at first it was an advertisement for the latest big-budget action flick. I thought to myself, “That is one heck of a plot—I need to see that.” Minutes later, too my absolute horror, I realized the events depicted weren’t Hollywood’s latest mega-disaster movie, but my generation’s own Pearl Harbor.

And while we tend to think of how the events that day shaped our own lives and our country’s global outlook, 9/11 clearly altered the prospects and national security fortunes of many others nations as well—and not just in the Middle East.

One nation that was impacted dramatically by the events of 9/11, and clearly aided in its rise to not only great power but near superpower status, is none other than the People’s Republic of China.

I would bet Chinese leaders also remember where they were, but more importantly what they felt on 9/11—an overwhelming sense of relieve and opportunity. In fact, Frank Ching, a prominent journalist who opened the Wall Street Journal’s Hong Kong bureau, went so far as to say that from “China’s point of view the attacks were a blessing in disguise” (more on Frank in a second).

Now, I am sure at least some of you are reading the above, scratching your heads in disgust. Who would ever think they could profit in some fashion from such despicable acts? Welcome to the great game known as international politics, where history’s pages are filled with examples of one nation’s tragedy becoming another’s opportunity for power and glory. So let there be no doubt, China was impacted dramatically by the events of 9/11—and for the better. Read more

By Peter Navarro

In Defense Report, Stewart Webb writes,

“Anonymous sources within the U.S. Navy’s senior command have revealed that the U.S. is not concerned over any immediate threat from the introduction of China’s latest aircraft carrier in the Pacific, the Liaoning.”

China’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is a great source of national pride. It is also a grim symbol of the arrogance of an American defense establishment that largely dismisses Beijing’s under-sized training carrier as an antiquated bucket of rusty Soviet bolts.

Chinese carrier Liaoning

The prevailing Pentagon opinion is not wrong, at least when viewed through the keyhole of tactics and short-term thinking. The Liaoning is indeed a refurbished Soviet carrier originally launched in 1988 that the Chinese picked up for a rusting song from Ukraine in 1998.

The Liaoning is also a bit undersized. Its deck is just shy of 100 feet shorter than an American supercarrier like the Nimitz.

On top of that, the Liaoning has little in the way of advanced electronics or weaponry, so that taken as a whole it is clear that the Liaoning poses no direct competition to any American aircraft carrier strike groups patrolling in the East or South China Seas. Nor does the Liaoning pose a viable threat to any American forward bases in the region—tactical or otherwise.

These limitations of the Liaoning notwithstanding, there is also this stark reality: In an era of a rapidly shrinking American fleet, the Liaoning and its picket ships and air wing pose a growing threat to many of China’s neighbors in the South China Sea, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam. Read more