"Chinese President Xi Jinping likes to travel big. His visit to Myanmar in January — the first for a Chinese leader in almost two decades — was no exception, capped off with no less than 33 bilateral agreements. However, the number alone overstates things. Some of the "agreements" merely saw Xi's entourage hand over feasibility studies for proposed projects. Many are not new. The number does, however, underscore the ever-tighter orbit Myanmar has been tracing around its giant neighbor since a detente with the West hit reverse over a massacre of the country's Muslim Rohingya minority in 2017. Crucially, a few of the deals advance China's plans to turn Myanmar into a secure new route to the Indian Ocean, valuable to Beijing for strategic and economic reasons. Whether China's coming spending splurge spells boom or bust for threadbare Myanmar — and peace or more war for its restive fringes — remains a worry. A pair of Chinese-built oil and gas pipelines already bisect Myanmar, from Kyaukphyu on the country's Bay of Bengal coastline to its border with China's landlocked Yunnan province. As part of Xi's signature Belt and Road Initiative, the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor would add a rail link to the route, an industrial park along their shared border and — most critically, and controversially — a deep sea port at Kyaukphyu to anchor it all..."