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Patrick Boehler

Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi plans to visit China next month, senior members of her political party said.
"We asked for some of her time … but she said she might be going to China and needed some free time in December," Han Thar Myint, of the National League for Democracy's Central Executive Committee, told the South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama announced he would meet Suu Kyi in Yangon on November 14, during a six-day trip that also includes stops in China and Australia, the White House said.
Obama will spend three days in Myanmar, and will participate in a US-Asean summit in its capital, Naypyidaw, where a bilateral meeting with Myanmar president Thein Sein is also planned.
Obama called Myanmar's president last week to underscore "the need for an inclusive and credible process for conducting the 2015 elections". A constitutional clause barring Suu Kyi from running for president is under review.
Suu Kyi's NLD is preparing to contest the general elections scheduled for the end of next year, the first such free vote in more than two decades in the Southeast Asian nation.
Suu Kyi's China invitation was not handled by her party, but her personal office. Dr Tin Mar Aung, her personal assistant, said she could not comment. The Chinese embassy in Yangon did not reply to a request for comment.
On Monday, Irrawaddy Magazine, a Myanmese exile publication based in Chiang Mai, quoted Win Htein, another committee member, as saying that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate would visit China, Myanmar's largest trading partner, in December.
In January, China's ambassador to Myanmar said it was only a matter of time before China invited the democracy icon, who has visited all other neighbouring countries, the US and several European countries since her house arrest was lifted by the military-led regime in 2010.
Nyo Ohn Myint, a former close adviser to Suu Kyi who handled her party's foreign affairs between 2002 and 2012, said the visit would show a domestic audience that the daughter of Myanmar's founding president, General Aung San, was able to handle the country's foreign affairs pragmatically.
"She has been accused of siding with the West and being its political tool," he said. "She wants to clear up that one."
Nyo Ohn Myint said he did not expect much to come out of a China visit other than the message that Beijing and the opposition figure could work together.
Long-time women's rights activist Lway Aye Nang said she would welcome Suu Kyi's visit to China. "This will show China that the NLD is not a threat to them," she said. Beijing "will see that they can deal with any possible government to come", she said, referring to next year's elections. China had not announced the visit, cautioned Yun Sun, a long-time observer of Sino-Myanmese relations at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"If she visits Beijing, it is foreseeable that she will meet the leaders … of the Chinese Communist Party," she said. "Both sides will focus on Sino-Myanmese relations, economic development [and] cooperation, [and] China's 'maritime Silk Road' [plans] rather than sensitive topics such as constitutional reform or the 2015 elections."
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
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Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi set to visit China next month, her party says

China hasn't confirmed Aung San Suu Kyi's visit. Photo: Xinhua

Aung San Suu Kyi is planning to visit China next month, senior members of the National League for Democracy said. Photo: EPA

Dragon at the doorstep: Myanmar’s changing ties with China

News

Asia

No word from Beijing on democracy icon going to neighbour, Myanmar’s largest trading partner


Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi plans to visit China next month, senior members of her political party said.


Aung San Suu Kyi

Analysis | Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi set to visit China next month, her party says

No word from Beijing on democracy icon going to neighbour, Myanmar’s largest trading partner