By Shannon Tiezzi
CITIC Group has won a contract to develop a port in Kyaukpyu on the Bay of Bengal.
China’s CITIC Group Corporation has won two contracts related to a special economic zone in western Myanmar, Reuters reports, including building a deep sea port on the Bay of Bengal. CITIC’s consortia (including China Harbor Engineering Company Ltd., China Merchants Holdings, TEDA Investment Holding, and Yunnan Construction Engineering Group) will lead projects to build the port as well as an industrial area at the Kyaukpyu Special Economic Zone in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State, which borders Bangladesh to the north and the Bay of Bengal to the west.
The contracts give yet another Chinese company a pivotal role in developing maritime infrastructure on the Indian Ocean, adding to China’s involvement in a number of regional ports (Chittagong in Bangladesh, Gwadar in Pakistan, and Colombo in Sri Lanka). Taken together, those ports are sometimes referred to as China’s “string of pearls” — a concept that assumes they will be of military as well as civilian use.
Kyaukpyu is of particular interest to China because overland links between Myanmar and southern China can reduce reliance on the potential chokepoint of the Strait of Malacca. By eliminating the need to travel via the Strait of Malacca, Kyaukpyu Port would save about 5,000 kilometers in sailing distance for shipments traveling to China from India and points beyond. The drive to diversify its shipping routes – and to increase economic clout in neighboring countries – is a major impetus behind the new “Belt and Road” initiative, which envisions infrastructure and trade networks linking China with every part of the Eurasian continent.
Read the full story at The Diplomat