Another military coup in Myanmar has stunned the world. It took two days for the international community to react and begin an almost unanimous condemnation. I say almost unanimous because the Chinese Communist Party seemed to react differently than everyone else, with a murderous stance hidden in its conciliatory stance, as if they knew in advance that the coup would benefit the Communist Party. Foreign Minister Wang Yi had just visited Burma before the coup.
What was the immediate cause of the coup? Some say it was a difference in political line, others say it was a change in the distribution of interests, both yes and no. Differences in viewpoints often occur, and the distribution of interests is not always the same, so should there be a military coup? The media pundits who miss the point and are specious are talking out of their asses and fooling their readers.
The real reason is that after Burma’s last democratic elections, without addressing the premise of an independent military, Western capitalists were anxious to lift sanctions; to capture the market, laying the groundwork for Burma’s democratization. Of course, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s government may have taken a position of leaning on the Chinese Communist Party out of distrust of the West, trying to step on two boats.
This includes relying on domestic nationalist thinking to boost its own support, hence its current super high approval rating. But Hitler also had a super high approval rate, so is that democracy? The Chinese Communist Party also had a super high approval rate at the beginning of its rise to power. This makes the simplistic democrats who are full of communist thinking can’t figure it out. In fact, democracy is not only about elections, but also includes many indispensable elements, and nationalization of the military is one of them.
The nationalization of the military is not only essential for a modern democratic regime, but also for a non-democratic but modernized one. Throughout Chinese history, the nationalization of the military has been a decisive condition for the great powers to move toward stability. For 2,500 years, many scholars have failed to understand why Confucius placed the division between the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States at the point where the three families divided the Jin dynasty, and the various reasons he gave were actually incomprehensible.
The division of the three families into Jin and Jin is precisely the division between the privatization of the army and the nationalization of the army. In the Spring and Autumn period, it was popular to keep the armies in the private hands of the lords, and the monarchs mobilized the armies from each lord in case of war, while maintaining the balance among the lords in normal times. When the army of the lords became bigger and bigger due to annexation and the monarch could not maintain the balance, the division of the three houses into Jin occurred. The state of Jin disappeared from then on.
From this point on, the state system changed dramatically. The nationalization of the army alleviated the concern of internal rebellion and the speed of annexation was greatly accelerated, but wars did not become more frequent in the Warring States period. The previous Spring and Autumn Period, however, was in fact a Time of more frequent wars. Of course, the nationalization of the army was not the only factor, but the competition of institutions was more important. The plebeianization of slaves and the privatization of land were also important reasons for the increased competitiveness.
But from the Qin and Han dynasties, the nationalization of the army was an important condition for social stability. Subsequent dynasties, in addition to the death of the country by foreign invasion, were the ones in which the privatization of the army led to the instability of the country to the point of death. The most typical example is the Tang Dynasty, which also included the Han Dynasty. The decline of the Tang Dynasty started with the strength of the clans. The so-called An-Shi Rebellion began with the privatization of the army.
The international community helped Burma solve the problem of elections, but the international community, including Aung San Suu Kyi, has not solved the problem of privatization of the military. Can such a democracy be maintained? This, combined with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s misguided strategy of trying to hold The Emperor to ransom and her mindset of striking a balance between the major powers, ultimately led to the military coup. For a democratic regime, the people are the Son of Heaven. But for a military dictatorship, the people are the grass. In a situation where the military is still privatized and democracy is not yet firmly established, holding the Son of Heaven hostage is not a way to command the vassals, because the vassals do not approve.
In this regard, the CCP is smarter than the Nazis and the Soviet Union. The Nazis and the Soviet Union still had the Wehrmacht, while the Communist Party had the full SS. The army is the private army of the Communist Party, a principle that has been absolutely upheld from Mao to Xi. In an environment where the basic institutions of the state are not democratic, speculation about nationalizing the military would not be acceptable to the Communist Party. They understand that the army is not far from a military coup if it is no longer the private army of the Communist Party.
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