"In South Asia now, geo-economics seems all set to shape the region's geo-politics with Beijing's ambitious US$ 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), designed ostensibly to integrate economies of the restive Xingian and western provinces with that of Pakistan. But its real strategic objective is to develop the sea ports of Pakistan's Baluchistan to enable western China and the energy-rich Central Asian republics to gain unfettered access to the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. In this background, China’s reported move to build an economic corridor with Myanmar is cause for some concern in India. The idea of a separate China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) was pushed through during the recent visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Myanmar following his successful efforts to persuade Myanmar and Bangladesh to discuss the Rohingya problem across the table and work out a framework of agreement to a phased programme of their repatriation to Rakhine. The Chinese have apparently done a lot of hard work to bring home to the Myanmarese Army the point that the global community and the UN system will never accept the expulsion of Rohingyas as it violates human rights and the customary international law of citizenship. The significance of Chinese intervention, the first time in history in a long-drawn-out dispute involving two states, which till 1935, were parts of the British Raj, cannot be missed by strategic analysts, as it has demonstrated growing Chinese influence in Myanmar and Bangladesh, both of which share borders with India and are of vital importance to the success of India’s Act East Policy. The CMEC might have come as a surprise as it runs parallel to the Bangladesh-China-India and Myanmar Initiative (BCIM), but the fact remains that it has been a non-starter, especially after China launched CPEC, which passes through the areas of Jammu and Kashmir under illegal occupation of Pakistan and is seen as a China-led initiative..."