Beijing: Chinese scholars are proposing to build an oil pipeline from Burma to China in order to reduce the country’s dependence on shipping oil imports through the Strait of Malacca.

The plan is one of numerous proposals to build a second oil pipeline from Asian countries, including Thailand, Pakistan and Bangladesh, to China. China is now building an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan.

This was originally reported in the latest issue of Oriental Outlook magazine, which is published by the official Xinhua news agency.

The proposal put forward by three professors from south-west Yunnan Province, which borders Burma, suggested that China build an oil pipeline from Burma’s western deep water port of Sittwe across the country to the south-western Chinese city of Kunming.

However, contrary to the report, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Burma Prime Minister Khin Nyunt did not discuss the plans for an oil pipeline when they met last Sunday 11 July .

“Most of China’s oil imports come from the Middle East and Africa. Given the current situation in the Malacca Strait, we feel that we should come up with a suitable alternative,” Professor Li Chengyang, a co-author of the proposal, told The Straits Times. China is concerned that the rise in terrorist activities in Southeast Asia will increase the risk of a terrorist strike in the strait, where four-fifths of its oil imports must pass through.

Also, South-east Asia is home to the world’s most pirate-infested waters, with 79 attacks in the first quarter of this year, says the International Maritime Bureau.

Earlier this year, US Pacific Command chief Admiral Thomas Fargo proposed the idea of a Regional Maritime Security Initiative aimed at improving cooperation, intelligence-sharing, response mechanisms and patrolling of waters, particularly around the Malacca Strait.

Said Prof Li: “Nominally, the American initiative will help Southeast Asian countries fight terrorism. But in reality, they want to control the Strait of Malacca. For China to fall under American control is a very risky thing.”

China is determined to protect its national security by diversifying where and how the world’s second-largest oil consuming country obtains its oil.

China’s hunger for oil, which has been one factor in the rise of world oil prices, is expected to grow by 8.1 per cent or 510,000 barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency.

“Limited refining and oil-import capacity and transportation bottlenecks may put a cap on Chinese demand growth by constraining supply,” it said on Tuesday.