The release of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi poses a host of thorny questions to vex Chinese policymakers, from fears about a loss of influence there to awkward questions about freedom at home.
Will she help usher in a government with which the United States and Europe feel it can do business? What would that mean for China's considerable investments in the country that have benefitted from the Western sanctions on Myanmar?
"Inevitably a lifting or easing of sanctions would lead to more competition for Chinese companies in Myanmar, but that will not happen overnight just because Suu Kyi has been let out," said Lin Xixing, a Myanmar expert at Guangzhou's Jinan University.
"China will be paying close attention to what is happening in Myanmar. What the government most wants is stability there," he added. "There is still a lot of uncertainty about what her release means and what she will be able to do."
To be sure, Beijing's worries about their southern neighbor are not new. Their long shared border hides rebel armies and drug lords, whose spats with Myanmar's central government have spilled into China in the past.
China has been pondering how to deal with slowly thawing ties between the former Burma and the United States since President Barack Obama began tentative contacts last year, culminating in a rare meeting with Prime Minister Thein Sein in Singapore.
Senator Jim Webb, the chair of a Senate subcommittee on East Asia who is an outspoken proponent of deepening ties with the isolated country, said last month it risked becoming a "a province of China" if it remained out in the cold.
Suu Kyi said on Sunday she was willing to enter into dialogue with Western nations to lift sanctions on the country if the Burmese people wanted it. She also assured China that she did not consider it an enemy.
"China is a very important neighbor of our country. Don't consider China as an enemy," she said on her first full day of release from house arrest.
China has been careful to maintain links with opposition groups in Myanmar despite its close relationship with the current military rulers.
"She would know that if she wants to be a political player in Burma then she needs to have ... a fairly clear path from China," said Ian Holliday, a Myanmar expert at the University of Hong Kong. "It's smart geo-politics on her part. She would not want to make an enemy of Beijing."
CLOSE ECONOMIC TIES
The sanctions have been good to China. China has invested billions of dollars in Myanmar -- $8.17 billion in the current fiscal year, accounting for two-thirds of its total investment over the past two decades, according to Myanmar state media.
Energy projects formed the bulk of the investment, with $5 billion in hydropower and $2.15 billion in the oil and gas sector of the resource-rich nation. However, analysts say official investment data for Myanmar is notoriously unreliable.
Bilateral trade grew by more than one-quarter in 2008 to about $2.63 billion, according to Chinese figures.
Myanmar also gives China access to the Indian Ocean, not only for imports of oil and gas and exports from landlocked southwestern Chinese provinces, but also potentially for military bases or listening posts.
In October, China's state energy group CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
China could actually benefit if the sanctions are lifted and Myanmar's relations with Washington improve. A richer Myanmar would in turn help development in China's poorer western provinces.
"Myanmar would speed up its opening up and reforms, bringing with it even more opportunities for Chinese brands and firms," Yu Changsen, a professor at Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University, told the Guangzhou Daily earlier this year.
"This will lead to even closer cooperation between the two countries."
The Chinese government has yet to give a formal reaction to her release, though it has been reported on by some of the country's closely controlled state media with a strange mix of incredulity and praise for her courage.
The Global Times, a popular tabloid run by Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, noted dryly that "the most excited people were Westerners", adding there were many white faces in the crowd when she was released.
The regional Chongqing Evening Post called her the person "who causes the military government the worst of headaches", but noted that despite her lack of money or official title, "she owns the hearts of Myanmar's people".
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