Deng Xiaoping

The first Chinese leader to visit Myanmar

This video shows the highlights of Deng Xiaoping's visit to Rangoon in January 1978. Deng Xiaoping was the first Chinese leader to visit Myanmar; Zhou Enlai had visited several times as Premier, but not Mao Zedong or Hua Guofeng. For more than a decade, China had been providing strong support to the Communist Party of Burma insurgency based in Pangsang. But, by 1978, China was keen to build closer economic and political ties with the Burma Socialist Programme Party government of...