ceremonial boat trip from Thailand to Vietnam—to celebrate the signing of the 1995 Agreement—which ran aground mid-river as a result of China filling the reservoir of the Manwan Dam. Although China and Burma became "dialogue partners" of the MRC in 1996 and slowly but steadily escalated their (non-binding) participation in its various forums, it is at present unthinkable that either would join the MRC in the near future. In April 2002, China began providing daily water level data to the MRC during the flood season. Critics noted that the emphasis on "flood control" rather than dry season flows represented an important omission given the concerns prioritized by the Mekong regime. In July 2003, MRC CEO Joern Kristensen reported that China had agreed to scale back its plans to blast rapids by implementing only phase one (of three) of its Upper Mekong Navigation Improvement Project; however, China’s future intentions in this area are far from certain. One area in which China has been particularly reticent is in providing information about the operation of its dams, rather than just flow data, including refusing to join emergency meetings in 2004. Only in 2005 did China agreed to hold technical discussions directly with the MRC. On 2 June 2005, at the invitation of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Water Resources, MRC CEO Dr. Olivier Cogels and a delegation of the secretariat's senior staff made the first official visit to Beijing to hold technical consultations under the framework of cooperation between China and the MRC, within the scope of the Mekong Programme. The delegation identified a number of potential areas of cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Water Resources, and the Ministry of Communication, Information and Transport. These discussions resulted in China supplying the MRC (beginning in 2007) with 24-hour water level and 12-hour rainfall data for flood forecasts in exchange for monthly flow data from the MRC Secretariat. The incentives for China to enter into cooperative regimes on the Mekong are substantially reduced by the alternative of the Salween River as a commercial outlet for China's Yunnan province, made considerably more attractive by requiring negotiation solely with Burma, rather than with four different riparians. News media and official sources often portray China's joining the commission as a panacea for resolving the over-development of the Mekong. However, there is no indication that China's joining the MRC