China’s foreign minister Wang Yi is not expected to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained by the military since it seized power in February 2021. (AP pic)
BEIJING: China’s foreign minister will hold talks with Myanmar’s junta chief during an upcoming visit to the country but will not meet detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a senior military official said on Tuesday.
Wang Yi will meet with junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, the senior official said, on a visit slated to start on Wednesday and which comes with the junta battling ethnic minority armed groups along their shared border.
He will not meet Suu Kyi, who has been detained by the military since it seized power in February 2021, the official said.
The last top Chinese official to visit the isolated junta was former Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, who held talks with Min Aung Hlaing in May last year.
On that trip he said Beijing “stands with Myanmar on the international stage.”
Relations later cooled over the junta’s failure to crack down on online scam compounds in Myanmar’s borderlands targeting Chinese citizens.
The military is reeling from losses to ethnic minority armed groups in Shan state near the border with China.
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