" Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/df96fcf4-35e4-11ea-ac3c-f68c10993b04 President Xi Jinping, who travels to Myanmar this week, will be the first Chinese leader to visit in nearly 20 years. What happens next in bilateral relations could determine Myanmar’s future and China’s place in the region for generations. Beijing hopes for the speedy realisation of a China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a massive infrastructure scheme valued in tens of billions of dollars. Its spine will be a railway line linking China’s Yunnan province with both the city of Yangon and a new deep-sea port at Kyaukpyu on the Bay of Bengal. The corridor is part of the Belt and Road Initiative and is meant to include a 6,000-megawatt dam on the Irrawaddy river, as well as a new city for Chinese manufacturing close to Yangon. Dozens of projects will bind Myanmar closely to the markets of south-west China. More importantly for Beijing, they will form an artery between China’s hinterland and the Indian Ocean. But there’s a catch: the corridor would traverse one of the world’s most complex and violent political landscapes. China and Myanmar share a 1,300-mile border and uplands between the border and the Irrawaddy Valley, an area about the size of Britain, are home to more than a dozen ethnic-based insurgent armies and hundreds of militia forces..."