BANGKOK: Myanmar’s junta chief met China’s president for the first time since seizing power, state media reported Saturday, the highest-level meeting with a key ally for the internationally sanctioned military leader.Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup in 2021 overthrowing Myanmar’s brief experiment with democracy and plunging the nation into civil war.In the four years since, his armed forces have battled dozens of ethnic armed groups and rebel militias, some with close links to China, opposed to its rule.The conflict has seen Min Aung Hlaing draw condemnation from rights groups and pursued by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, but he has maintained close ties to allies China and Russia. He met Beijing’s leader Xi Jinping in Moscow on the sidelines of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on Friday and thanked China for its humanitarian assistance following a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in March, reported junta media The Global New Light of MyanmarHe also thanked China “for its support of Myanmar’s stance on regional and international fronts”, it said.Chinese state media Xinhua news reported that Xi expressed his country’s support for Myanmar pursuing development “suited to its national conditions, safeguarding its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national stability, and steadily advancing its domestic political agenda”.Xi said he hoped Myanmar would take “concrete measures to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Myanmar, and intensify efforts to combat cross-border crimes”.More than 6,600 people have been killed since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, and millions displaced. Concerned about the violence on its doorstep destabilising regional peace and its economic ambitions, China has reportedly mediated talks between Myanmar’s junta and key rebel groups.China is a major ally and arms supplier to the junta, but analysts say it also maintains ties with armed ethnic groups in Myanmar that hold territory near its border.Beijing has long been eyeing Myanmar’s resource-rich northern Shan state, now under rebel control, for infrastructure investment under its trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.While Min Aung Hlaing’s Friday meeting with Xi was his first time in his role as junta chief, the general had previously met the Chinese leader in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw in January 2020, a year before seizing power.
