General Soe Win, the prime minister of Burma, has arrived in Beijing for an official four-day visit. The trip was originally scheduled to take place several months ago but was postponed by the Chinese authorities. “We expect that this visit will further expand and deepen the traditional friendship between China and Myanmar [Burma],” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Kong Quan said in Beijing on the eve of the Burmese leader’s trip.

Gen Soe Win is expected to be given the red carpet treatment. He is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. He will also have discussions with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. Several trade and economic agreements will be signed during Gen Soe Win’s visit. The trip was delayed last year because Beijing was not ready then to sign them.

With international sanctions against Burma, Rangoon is increasingly dependent on its neighbours for trade and political support. “We have good relations with all our neighbours and that is what is important, especially China, India and Thailand,” Burma’s Foreign Minister Nyan Win recently told the Bangkok Post.

Over the past year China increasingly has emerged as Rangoon’s most important ally, even though there have been tensions between them at times. There had been significant questions about Burmese corruption involving major Chinese contracts and construction deals. But recent important oil deals between Beijing and Rangoon for oil and gas extraction rights in western Burma seem to have helped mend some problems between the two countries.

Trade remains high on Gen Soe Win’s agenda as the military regime finds itself in increasing economic difficulties, intensified by the excessively expensive relocation of the country’s administrative and military centre from Rangoon some 400 kilometres north to Pyinmana.

“The junta is virtually bankrupt and needs Chinese financial support to help it overcome some of its immediate problems,” said a Rangoon-based Asian diplomat. They are looking for more soft loans, especially to complete the infrastructural needs of the new capital, he added. Much of the telecommunications for the new centre, including the satellite and mobile phone infrastructure, has already been provided by Beijing. China is not expected to push Burma on its human rights record, but the current political impasse in Rangoon is likely to be discussed when Gen Soe Win meet’s China’s foreign minister. “Human rights will not be discussed when the Burmese leader meets his Chinese counterpart,” according to a Chinese government official in Beijing.

But Beijing will discuss Burma’s political reform programme during the visit, senior Chinese officials admitted. China is expected to urge Rangoon to step up its national reconciliation programme and the need for more political and economic transparency.

China has been quietly disturbed by the lack of progress on the junta’s seven-stage roadmap announced in August 2003 by the then prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt. Beijing was dismayed by the recent adjournment of the National Convention until the end of this year.

While China believes political reform is an internal matter for the Burmese regime, they fear that excessive delays in the national reconciliation process are only likely to increase instability in Burma.

This is China’s greatest concern. They fear social unrest in Burma would dramatically affect their southern provinces. More than 200,000 Chinese migrants have crossed into Burma in the past decade, according to senior Chinese officials. Some western analysts believe there could be as many as a million Chinese now resident in Burma.

Most of them are there unofficially. They are running small businesses throughout northern Burma, Mandalay and even Rangoon. Technical experts, workers and even farmers have migrated across the border in search of work. Many of the market sellers in the border region, especially in the border towns like Mongla, are also Chinese.

China’s main strategic concerns are to see Burma int roduce some measure of political reform and boost economic development. The last thing Beijing needs is thousands of Chinese migrants flooding back across the border, increasing the number of restless, unemployed Chinese peasants looking for work and adding to China’s growing social and rural unrest. “China’s leaders understand that the Burmese military regime is illegitimate,” a senior Chinese official in Beijing said. “It needs to build a greater degree of consensus within the country behind it, and develop the economy. Without that Burma remains unstable and a constant threat to the security and stability of the region, especially China,” he said.

There is no doubt that privately Beijing continues to worry about the lack of progress towards political reform in Burma. For more than a year now, a senior political academic from Beijing has been in Rangoon advising the regime’s top generals on various political scenarios.

Although China remains Burma’s most consistent supporter when the military regime is criticised at the UN or other international forums, they have been increasingly trying to distance themselves from Rangoon. “China is increasingly circumspect in its defence of Burma, especially at the UN,” said a western diplomat, who regularly attends the UN sessions in New York.

“At the General Assembly last year, when the UN special rapporteur on Burma, Professor Paulo Pinheiro, presented his findings, China reluctantly defended Rangoon, and simply queried Mr Pinheiro’s sources,” she said. They appeared uneasy at being associated with Rangoon’s only other defendants – Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. Washington has also signalled its belief that Beijing has private reservations about the Rangoon regime, which it fears is exporting Aids and drugs into China. “Chinese officials, while yet to speak publicly about the situation in Burma, have privately noted their concern, and we are engaged in an active dialogue with them,” US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill – America’s top diplomat for Asian affairs – told Congress last week.

Many other diplomats involved with Burma have also noted China’s ambivalence towards Rangoon. The real issue is whether Beijing will actively encourage Rangoon to move towards political reform, even if it does so privately rather than publicly.

“China has a critical role to play in any effort to bring reform and democracy to Myanmar,” Razali Ismail, the Malaysian diplomat who has recently resigned as the UN secretary-general’s special UN envoy after being denied access to the country for almost two years, recently reflected. “I should have spent more time trying to convince Beijing that it was in their interests to be more pro-active with Rangoon,” he said.

But Beijing is not convinced it has any real influence with the Burmese generals, according to Southeast Asian diplomats who have discussed the issue with senior Chinese officials in the past few months. There is no doubt that China lost one of its main allies in Burma when Gen Khin Nyunt and his supporters were arrested and purged at the end of 2004. At the time China had dubbed him Burma’s Deng Xiaoping. Since his fall China has tried unsuccessfully to find another ally within the regime.

“Their greatest fear now is that Burma’s second in command, General Maung Aye, who is seen as pro-India, may gain in influence,” said an Asian diplomat in Rangoon. “Any suggestion that he may take over from the country’s main ruler, General Than Shwe, sends them into an apoplectic spin.” So strategic priorities, including countering possible Indian influence in Burma, and economic benefits may count for more in Beijing than longer-term concerns about the country’s potential instability.