"On the western bank of the muddy Hlaing River, development and prosperity is a distant view. It can be seen across the expanse of water in the rising apartment blocks, office buildings and grinding industry. Over there is Yangon proper, a city of some six million people and the economic hub of Myanmar. Over here is a simpler life of small villages, struggling rice fields and roads as bumpy as local prospects. But both the landscape and the outlook of the population on the western bank are set for dramatic change in the coming years. A mega project is planned on this land, a new metropolis to be powered by Chinese money. The New Yangon City project is an ambitious and controversial idea in its early conception days. The grand vision of Yangon’s regional government, which created the New Yangon City Development Company (NYDC) in March last year to partner with a Chinese state investment firm, is to build a brand new smart and “liveable” city with a population of 1.2 million people by 2050..."