Myanmar junta revives plans for China-backed mega-dam

Myanmar junta revives plans for China-backed mega-dam
by AFP Staff Writers
Yangon (AFP) May 24, 2024

Myanmar's junta has revived plans for a $3.6 billion Chinese-backed dam in the north of the country that was suspended more than 10 years ago following huge public opposition.

The project to build the 6,000-megawatt Myitsone dam in northern Kachin state was ended in 2011 under a previous junta.

Its opponents said the dam on the Ayeyarwady river -- which would have exported around 90 percent of the power it generated to China -- would cause huge environmental damage and bring little benefit to the country.

The junta announced a new "leading group" for the hydropower project in a notice dated April 24 and released on an obscure government portal on Tuesday.

The group is made up of 11 members, including the deputy minister for electricity, and will "conduct and manage research, technical solutions and public relations" for the project, the notice said.

It will work with China's State Power Investment Corporation's (SPIC) Yunnan International Power Investment Company on "research, technical solutions, and public relations," it added, without giving details.

SPIC is a Chinese state-owned group and one of the biggest utility companies in the country.

A 2015 environmental assessment commissioned by the Myanmar government strongly advised against the dam's construction, saying the move could alter the river flow on a wide scale.

A World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report in 2018 estimated that some 34 million people in Myanmar live in the Ayeyarwady basin, roughly two thirds of the country's population.

Northern Kachin state has been rocked by fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the military for decades.

A KIA spokesman told AFP the group's political wing would meet to discuss the junta's revival of the Myitsone project.

As China's vice president in 2009, Xi Jinping personally signed off on the Myitsone dam with Myanmar's then-military junta.

During his state visit to Myanmar in 2020, protesters gathered in commercial hub Yangon to demonstrate against any reinstatement of the controversial mega-dam.

Myanmar is a vital piece of China's Belt and Road Initiative, Xi's flagship $1 trillion project that includes maritime, rail and road projects in Asia, Africa and Europe.

But progress in Myanmar has been hampered by the conflict unleashed by the military's 2021 coup.

Last year an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups seized swathes of territory in Shan state along the border with China's Yunnan province.

According to local media reports China hosted talks between the military and the alliance earlier this month but little progress was made.

Beijing, the junta and the alliance have all not responded to AFP questions on whether the talks happened.

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Beijing's foreign ministry said China would "continue to provide all possible support and assistance for the northern Myanmar peace process."