China cannot give up its newly- won access to the Indian Ocean and Myanmar's strategic importance to Beijing cannot, therefore, be overestimated.More than 60 per cent of the world’s oil shipments pass through the Indian Ocean from the Middle East’s oil field to China, Japan and other strong economies in the region, as does 70 per cent of all container traffic to and from the Asian industrial countries
On July 17, a scheduled Malaysian Airlines aircraft, MH 17, that took off from Amsterdam’s Schipol airport, was shot down over war-torn Ukraine. This was the second time in six months that an airline’s aircraft had met with such a tragedy. In March, another Malaysian aircraft, MH 370, disappeared into thin air. In spite of naval fleets from six countries scouring the Indian Ocean in what has become the largest and most expensive search mission in history, its wreckage remains to be found. But the disappearance ended up triggering a million conspiracy theories.