"then Minister for Planning and Finance U Kyaw Win arrived at the State Guesthouse in Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan Province, to meet Mr Ning Jizhe, vice chairperson of China’s National Development and Reform Commission. Kyaw Win was three days into a visit to China with a delegation of 56 businesspeople from the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the country’s peak business body. That morning, he negotiated a draft Memorandum of Understanding for the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a wide-reaching initiative that was formally announced by China’s foreign minister Wang Yi in November 2017. The CMEC agreement is two things. First, it is a physical corridor that would connect China’s landlocked Yunnan through Mandalay to Kyaukphyu and Yangon, on new roads and a high-speed railway, in what Wang called a “three-pillar giant cooperation pattern”. Second, it is a conceptual corridor. The overall aim is greater economic integration through initiatives such as industrial zones, trade quotas and tax breaks, but the CMEC can also include cooperation in areas not directly connected to the economy, such as disaster mitigation and public health. The CMEC agreement is likely to see tens of billions of dollars of investment funnelled into Myanmar from private and state-owned Chinese firms under the One Belt, One Road initiative. Despite the significance of the agreement for Myanmar’s future, the talks have taken place behind closed doors and with almost no public consultation. State media did not report on Kyaw Win’s trip to Kunming, and details of the February talks were not made public..."