BEIJING: Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing today, state media said, during her closely watched first visit that China hopes will establish a line of communication with the influential opposition leader.

Suu Kyi met Xi at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

Beijing was a key backer of Myanmar’s former military junta while it was under western sanctions — most of which have been lifted since 2011 — and a much-needed international ally for a brutal regime that crushed dissent and kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for more than 15 years.

But China-Myanmar relations cooled after the country introduced democratic reforms and opened up economically to the west, while in recent months an ethnic insurgency in the Kokang region of Myanmar has spilled over the border into China.

The visit comes as Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party is expected to perform strongly in elections later this year and China looks to develop a rapport with the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Suu Kyi came to China at the invitation of the Communist Party, of which Xi is the general secretary.

“China and Myanmar are close, friendly neighbours,” Xi said, according to Xinhua.

“China always looks at China-Myanmar relationship from a strategic and long-term perspective,” he added.

“We hope and believe that the Myanmar side will also maintain a consistent stance on China-Myanmar relationship and be committed to advancing friendly ties, no matter how its domestic situation changes.”

Xinhua did not immediately report Suu Kyi’s remarks.

Suu Kyi arrived in Beijing yesterday with an NLD delegation and met later in the evening with a senior Communist Party official Wang Jiarui.

It is rare for China to invite an opposition leader to visit, given its policy of avoiding involvement in what it calls the internal affairs of other countries.

Still, Suu Kyi’s welcome has all the hallmarks of an official visit — the imposing Great Hall of the People is where Xi regularly welcomes visiting heads of state.

“The Chinese realise they should not keep all their eggs in one basket and they see they need to build bridges,” said Willy Lam, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“This policy shift is an improvement and represents a maturity in Beijing’s attitude towards relationships with authoritarian regimes,” he added.

“They used to just invest and build relationships with the powers that be.”

Since launching reforms in 2011, Myanmar President Thein Sein has reached out to the United States and other countries.

But the 69-year-old Suu Kyi is unable to stand for president herself because of a law scripted by the junta forbidding people who have been married to foreigners — as she was before her British husband’s death — or those who have foreign children from running for president, something she is trying to change.

There is also considerable irony in China welcoming a noted democracy advocate and Nobel Prize winner while Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner, languishes in prison after being sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for circulating a petition calling for democratic reforms.

China’s foreign ministry said today that China hopes the visit will bolster “mutual understanding and trust”.

Suu Kyi will also travel to Shanghai and the southwestern province of Yunnan.