China’s ambition of transporting energy through the Indian Ocean and across the mountains of Myanmar seems close to fulfillment. Natural gas is scheduled to start flowing in July from wells deep in the Bay of Bengal through a 500-mile pipeline. Oil will run in a parallel pipe at the end of the year.
But for China, the cost of the pipelines has been far greater than the several billion dollars that the China National Petroleum Corporation, China’s energy giant, has spent on construction. With its projects challenged more than ever by activists energized by Myanmar’s democratic opening, China has been trying to repair its tarnished reputation among residents here, and in the country at large.
Farmers and fishermen in this remote coastal region — who made little headway while objecting to lost lands and diminished catches under Myanmar’s repressive military junta — are winning some concessions. In central Myanmar, monks have joined with ancestral landholders to stop a Chinese-led conglomerate from leveling a fabled mountain embedded with copper.
And last week, in a new ominous sign for the Chinese, guerrillas of the Shan State Army attacked a compound belonging to the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, a partner with the Chinese oil company, not far from the pipeline and close to China’s border.
In response to the broad opposition, Beijing has ordered secretive state-owned Chinese companies to do something they have rarely done before: publicly embrace Western-style corporate social responsibility practices and act humbly toward the people who live near their vaunted projects.
The grass-roots protests against Chinese projects disturb Beijing because they come amid a scramble for influence in Myanmar between China and the United States.
Official visits give a glimpse of the diplomatic jockeying. President Thein Sein of Myanmar, who heads the quasi-civilian government, will visit the White House on Monday in what will be the first encounter in Washington between an American president and a leader of the country formerly known as Burma, since 1966.
A member of the military junta that China backed for decades, Mr. Thein Sein met President Obama in November during what was the first visit by a sitting American president to Myanmar. Mr. Thein Sein has visited China twice in the past six months. The leader of the opposition, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was at the White House earlier this year and is expected in Beijing soon.
“It is in China’s self interest to think about the impact of their investments,” said Thant Myint-U, a Myanmar historian and author of “Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia.” “In the long term, it is difficult to see a Myanmar where China is not important. But there is a chance that China will no longer be the dominant actor in Myanmar, and that is worrying for some people in China.”
That concern has prompted Chinese officials, worried about losing Myanmar to the Americans, to push back. When a veteran Chinese diplomat, Wang Yingfan, was appointed several months ago as special envoy to Myanmar, he immediately flew there and spoke about the social obligations of Chinese state-run corporations.
And Gao Mingbo, the head of the political section at the Chinese Embassy in Yangon, said: “The companies must retain the support of the local communities. That has been the consistent message of the embassy: to be open, to be engaged.”
He created the embassy’s Facebook page; although Facebook is blocked in China, it is a tool that Chinese officials in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital and main city, are using to reach citizens.
“If you don’t walk the walk and just talk the talk, you won’t win the hearts and minds of the local people,” Mr. Gao said.
Whether China’s outreach efforts will quell anti-China protests is an open question.
Wai Moe contributed reporting.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/world/asia/under-pressure-china-measures-its-impact-in-myanmar.html?partner=rss&emc=rss