Burma Crackdown Could be Convenient for China

By WAI MOE

Small countries often serve as playgrounds for powerful countries in geopolitics. Is this true in Burma’s case?

Burma and China recently signed a US $2.5 billion project for the construction of oil and gas pipelines between Burma’s southwestern port of Kyaukpyu and China’s Yunnan Province. Work is due to start in early 2009.

According to analysts, Burma is important for China economically and strategically as a trading outlet to the Indian Ocean for its landlocked inland provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan and as a factor in its “two oceans” objective.

“Myanmar [Burma] is part and parcel of China’s grand strategic design to achieve its goal of becoming a great power in the 21st century,” said Poon Kim Shee, a scholar in international relations, in a paper, Political Economy of China-Myanmar Relations: Strategic and Economic Dimension.

China and Burma have had friendly relations since the Chinese Communists came to power in October 1949. Burma recognized the Chinese Communist regime in December 1949.

Following the Communist takeover in China, the Chinese nationalists, the Kuomintang, invaded eastern Burma to create resistance bases. There were numerous armed clashes with Burmese troops, and China’s Red Army eventually moved into the border area to subdue Chinese nationalist forces in Burma.

Analysts trace the rise of the Burmese military to the clashes with the Kuomintang army and the outbreak of civil war among armed ethnic groups.

From 1949 to 1962, Sino-Burmese relations were stable, but broke down after the military coup in 1962, led by the late dictator Ne Win. The Chinese regime openly supported the Communist Party of Burma militarily and financially in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1967, Chinese-Burmese riots broke out in several Burmese cities, claiming the lives of an estimated 100 people, but relations between the two countries steadily improved from the early 1980s onwards.

After the 1988 military coup in Burma, China became an important strategic ally for the ruling generals. The Chinese provided arms, aircraft and other material to the Burmese armed forces when Western countries stopped selling arms to the junta. The Chinese military also trains Burmese officers.

“The price Myanmar [Burma] will have to pay for deviating from its strategic neutrality principle might be to potentially become a useful pawn for China’s long-term strategic interests,” Poon Kim Shee said.

During Burma’s current period of military rule, China has also become one of the junta’s main business partners. Chinese migration to Burma has grown steadily since 1988 following the opening of the border to trade.

Economic life in Burma’s second largest city, Mandalay, and other towns in the north is now heavily influenced by Chinese businessmen, leading in some circles to an increase in Burmese nationalistic sentiment and resentment of Chinese influence.

Burmese writers and cartoonists sometimes reflect on the situation directly and indirectly. Published short stories and cartoons have noted ironically that that there are more Chinese than Burmese in central Mandalay, where the Chinese language is widely spoken and an increasing number of signs are written in Chinese.

“If you want to see and hear Burmese, you should go outside of Mandalay,” a famous Burmese cartoonist commented in one of his drawings.

Chan Tun, a former Burmese ambassador to China, said that anti-Chinese sentiment in Burma is not good for the two countries. “Burma and China are geographically neighbors,” he said. “We need each other, and we need to depend on each other.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is also trying to placate Western calls for more democracy and greater respect for human rights in Burma.

During the 7th Summit of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), chaired by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, leaders of Asian and European countries urged the junta to “engage all stakeholders in an inclusive political process,” and called for the lifting of restrictions placed on political parties and the early release of political prisoners.

“I think the Chinese policy is to have good relations with the Burmese government whoever is in control,” said Ohn Maung, a veteran politician in Rangoon.

Following the landslide victory by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in the May 1990 election, China’s ambassador to Burma also made his country’s first diplomatic visit to the party to congratulate it on its success.

However, the recent harsh sentences handed down by Burmese courts to political prisoners have raised the stakes for China, with many of the world’s governments expressing outrage over the lack of a fair judicial process.

One leading US newspaper, The Washington Post, suggested the courts’ crackdown and the protests it had provoked presented a convenient opportunity for Beijing.

“For China's Communist Party, repression in Burma is not an obstacle but a convenience, enabling the exploitation of natural resources with a minimum of well-targeted corruption,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

Apart from China, another giant neighbor, India, has also reached multiple trading and security agreements with the Burmese junta. India’s external affairs sectary Shiv Shankar Menon and Burma’s deputy foreign minister Kyaw Thu signed contracts on November 23 in Burma.

“India and China simply believe that their own business interests and strategic competition is more important, which has made Burma an unwilling battleground,” David Scott Mathieson, a Burma researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told The Irrawaddy by e-mail.

The struggle of two giants, China and India, to obtain natural gas and other valuable resources from Burma was symbolic of just what little regard both countries had for the basic freedoms of the people of Burma, he said.