Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs for Myanmar, will visit China from the 17-21 August in her first visit outside of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) since coming to power in elections held last year.
The proposed agenda centres firstly on Myanmar’s peace process, which involves the pacification of a number of armed, ethnically diverse separatist groups, some of which have close connections across the China-Myanmar border. Also to be discussed is the controversial Myitsone Dam in Kachin state, a Chinese-funded project suspended in 2011 by the former Myanmar President, Thein Sein, in the face of opposition from local Kachin villagers and environmental activists.
Suu Kyi made her first official trip to China in June 2015, as head of the then opposition National League for Democracy party (NLD), at the invitation of the Communist Party of China.