"Local reports say a river that forms part of the China-Myanmar border has turned red, prompting major concerns about pollution and accountability along a key trade route for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure and industry plan. The Shan Herald reported that the Shweli river, on the border between Myanmar’s Shan State and China’s Yunnan province, changed color around June 10. Local residents suspect the change is due to factories upstream in China dumping waste into the river. “We have never seen water color changes like this before. This is the first time I have ever seen the water red. I don’t know what China has done,” said local resident Sai Aye, who lives on the bank of the river in the border town of Muse. The Chinese portion of the Shweli river, known as the Ruili river in Chinese and Nam Mao in indigenous Shan, is lined with factories that process sugar, paper, fish for canning and meat. The Shweli is a tributary of the Irrawaddy river, the largest river in Myanmar and the source of irrigation for much of the country’s agriculture. “I think a factory in China dumped polluted water into the river. We have already sent an opposition letter to China’s external affairs department in Shweli [Ruili] city in Yunnan province,” Sai Kyaw Thein, a Shan State parliamentarian for Muse, told the Shan Herald. “We already sent a water sample from the Shweli river to a laboratory in Mandalay.” Though the cause of the red color hasn’t been found, the possible pollution raises major questions about environmental regulations and accountability around the BRI in Myanmar..."