China's strategy to diversify supply routes for its rapidly rising energy imports has just taken a major step forward.
On July 15, natural gas from Myanmar (aka Burma) started to flow along a recently completed pipeline that stretches for 1,100 kilometers from the sea coast, through jungle and mountains, to Kunming in southwest China.
There it will feed into other gas lines supplying homes, industries and power plants generating electricity in the world's biggest energy user.