Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi begins a trip to China Wednesday aimed at bolstering diplomatic ties that have been tested as a result of her country’s democratic reforms.

China’s Communist Party, a major ally of Myanmar’s former military junta, is hosting the Myanmar democracy icon, who is traveling with a delegation from her National League for Democracy.

NLD officials expect Aung San Suu Kyi to meet with top Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, during her groundbreaking five-day visit.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei this week confirmed the Nobel Peace Prize winner will meet with “state and party leaders.”

“China has maintained a long-term friendship with the relevant parties in Myanmar. We believe the visit can enhance understanding and trust between the two parties to further boost the friendship and cooperation between China and Myanmar,” he said.

Relations between Myanmar and China have been challenged since the Southeast Asian country’s military handed power to a nominally civilian government in 2010 and began reforms.

Myanmar has since developed closer business ties with the West after the United States and European countries began relaxing sanctions that had been in place for decades.

Myanmar’s relationship with China has also been tested by public displays of anti-China sentiment. In some cases, this has interfered with lucrative Beijing-backed economic projects.

One of the highest-profile China-backed ventures to be delayed is the Myitsone Dam, where construction was suspended in 2011 following environmental concerns.

‘Questions on both sides’

Chinese leaders are believed to be seeking assurances from Aung San Suu Kyi that the dam project and others like it will be able to continue.

“There are question marks on both sides as to where that relationship is headed,” said Jurgen Haacke, a political scientist at London School of Economics. “It is useful for [the Chinese leadership] to play the Suu Kyi card to try and have a different approach, a different avenue to get their message across.”

An editorial in China’s Communist Party-run Global Times this week praised Aung San Suu Kyi’s “pragmatic attitude” and said she will be a “good friend” to China, but it also said Myanmar’s reforms had made things “complicated.”

“The government is rapidly losing control over society,” the editorial warned.

The NLD is expected to make significant gains in elections to be held later this year. But it is not clear how high Aung San Suu Kyi will be able to rise, since the constitution currently bars her from becoming president.

Still, her visit is being seen as an attempt to further burnish her diplomatic skills and develop closer ties with Myanmar’s most crucial neighbor.

Suu Kyi is an international democracy icon for her years’ long defiance of, and imprisonment at the hands of, an authoritarian military government in Myanmar that was supported at the time by China, which still keeps fellow Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo imprisoned for his calls for democracy.

China began reaching out to Suu Kyi’s party when she became a member of parliament in 2012, said NLD spokesman Nyan Win. Chinese media now cover the party’s events and news conferences, something they rarely did before 2010, he said.

Qu Jianwen, a Southeast Asian affairs expert at Yunnan University, said Suu Kyi will be able to take “objective and reliable information” back to Myanmar’s people about China’s intentions in their country to counter their negative image of China.  

Some material for this report came from the Associated Press.
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