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area. In addition, Myanmar is in a critical geographic position for China’s economic concerns. President Xi has the Belt and Road Initiative, this far reaching strategy to build infrastructure across Asia and into Africa and even Eastern Europe. And Myanmar plays a critical position potentially for an oil or energy pipeline that would allow China to get resources from the Middle East and avoid the bottleneck in the Straits of Malacca. For all of these reasons, China would support the Myanmar government. Host: Robert, is China’s support strengthened by opposition from Washington where President Trump’s administration is calling for Rohingya refugees to return to safe zones? RLK: | don’t think that’s a big motivation for China. Far more important are local geopolitics, the Belt and Road Initiative, the potential energy pipeline. I don’t think China considers opposing Washington a major motivator for their strategy. U.S. comments seem normal for these situations, but are fairly ineffectual - look at Crimea or other places in the world where similar situations have occurred. RLK: Refugee crises are great tragedies for the world and it seems like we have more of them. There’s more of a desire for individual groups of people to assert their own independence. We see it in the Kurds, South Sudan, many places in the world. Perhaps it’s our interconnected world of 24-hour-a-day internet, which allows similar people to congregate together and take up their own personal interests. So it’s a very complex situation. China is dealing with it - for the reasons | said - for what it believes to be in its own interests. Host: Robert Lawrence Kuhn, thank you very much for joining us from Beijing. We appreciate your insights. BE Local Time 20:13 ROHINGYA REFUGEE CRISIS UN: Rohingya Muslims facing humanitarian catastrophe GIES WORLD NEWS js a ROHINGYA MUSLIMS RESPOND TO CLAIMS THE wW..! ROHINGYA REFUGEE CRISIS Myanmar's army denies targeting civilians EGS WORLD NEWS 4g] DOW 22158.18 NASDAQ 6460.19 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_033254