The development of a special economic zone (SEZ) around Kyaukphyu in Myanmar’s Rakhine State could move closer to reality before the end of the year with the naming of tender winners for the development of factories, new housing and infrastructure.
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Yun Sun, a China foreign policy analyst with the Washington-based non-profit think tank the Stimson Center, believes the SEZ and a new railway linked to China’s Yunnan Province could go ahead with reduced Chinese involvement.
She argues that a Yunnan-Kyaukphyu railway remains of strategic importance to China as a key component of China’s trans-Asia railway network and in “developing a southwest strategic corridor to the Indian Ocean, a route for crucial imports that bypass the congested Malacca Strait and hotly contested South China Sea.”
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