BANGKOK — As the leader of China, Xi Jinping, touched down in Myanmar on Friday, his two-day visit is designed to celebrate Beijing’s expanding presence in the region, both as an economic and political role model.

But relations between the two neighbors have never been so simple.

China has been a top foreign investor in Myanmar, which boasts a trove of natural resources. And China also provides a road map for how one of Asia’s poorest nations might lift its citizens out of hand-to-mouth existences.

“China’s remarkable poverty reduction has led it to become a modern developed nation,” said U Thein Myint Wai, a Myanmar economist and former commerce ministry official. “There will be a positive impact of working with such a nation.”

Beijing also reliably defends its smaller neighbor in the international arena, where the Myanmar military has been accused of a genocidal campaign against Rohingya Muslims in the country’s far west.