"PRECIOUS little information has emerged about the agreements that Myanmar signed late last month at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. Myanmar signed a handful of agreements at the forum, including two memorandums of understanding, an economic and technical cooperation agreement, and an “early harvest” project list. Neither government has released detailed information on the contents of these agreements, including whether they are binding in any way. The bigger story from the Belt and Road Forum, which fell April 25-27, appears to have been what Myanmar didn’t sign. Sources within and close to the government, as well as in the diplomatic and business communities, have told Frontier that China had been pressuring Myanmar before the forum to sign a number of project-specific agreements, including for some “controversial” projects. The Myanmar government refused to sign the agreements at the Belt and Road Forum, citing the need to conduct further assessments on the proposed projects, and instead committed only to more general MOUs. The sources were unable to confirm the number, indicating it could have been four to six additional agreements. China responded to this rejection by “dipping into its pocket”, as one government source put it, and instead proposing the economic and technical cooperation agreement with the grant. Before the forum “all sorts of hand grenades were being thrown around, on Myitsone for example”, said Mr Sean Turnell, an economic adviser to State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. “Maybe it is just part of the usual thing you do before a big meeting – get all the ambit claims out there. But in the meetings themselves [in Beijing], the atmospherics were good.” Turnell described it as a “fantastic” outcome for Myanmar. “The Chinese essentially agreed with the position here – that a lot of these projects are good but it’s up to the governments to negotiate them project by project,” he said..."