Media reports say Chinese authorities are building a fence along the southeastern border with Myanmar’s Shan State. The situation in Shan State is volatile and unstable. The move by China is seen by some analysts as a way to deter people infected with the new crown virus from sneaking into the country, while at the same time stopping Chinese gamblers and debt collection gangs from sneaking into Myanmar.
Authorities in southeastern China are building a fence along the border with Myanmar’s Shan state, Burmese news site The Irrawaddy reported Nov. 26. The news said the Burmese military sent a letter of protest.
Radio Free Asia reported this month that construction of the 3-meter-high fence began earlier this year and has been completed for about 660 kilometers.
China and Myanmar had solid political ties under the military government, and relations have wavered since 2011, largely due to poor Myanmar’s search for third-country investment and concerns over a construction debt owed to China. But last year Myanmar’s senior state minister Aung San Suu Kyi turned to China for a buffer after her government drew international criticism for persecuting the Muslim Rohingya minority.
Analysts and Chinese media say the fence has helped stop the spread of the new coronavirus pandemic northward into China. Myanmar has 118,000 cases, mainly in October and November when infections spiked. China, apparently the source of the new crown outbreak, took a tough blockade and brought the outbreak under control in March of this year.
Last month, Dezan Shira & Associates said China was concerned that an outbreak from overseas would “hit the economy hard. China has temporarily banned citizens of 10 other countries from entering the country because of health concerns.
Meanwhile, the border fence could also help deter Chinese nationals from entering the Kokang region of Shan State to gamble.
Priscilla Clapp, former resident chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, said casinos, spas and hotels have made Kokang a “major gambling center. She added that local elected officials also run some casinos.
There’s a lot of criminal violence there,” Clapp said. I think because that’s where the border with Kokang is, the Chinese aim is to close that border point.”
Chinese authorities have cracked down on Chinese nationals gambling in Myanmar, and local visitors have been implicated in clashes between government forces and ethnic armed groups, the official Communist Party media Global Times said on its website in 2016. One Chinese gambler was quoted as saying that the man had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and wanted to commit suicide.
Some analysts believe that another reason for China to build the border fence is the drug trade in Myanmar. The border fence could interfere with drug supply routes to China. In May, Burmese police made the largest seizure of synthetic opioid liquid fentanyl in Southeast Asia.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at the University of Chualalongkorn University in Bangkok, said the Wa state of Myanmar, which borders China, produces billions of dollars’ worth of drugs.
Huang Kui Bo, associate dean for international relations at Taiwan‘s National Chengchi University, said China and Myanmar are no strangers to border fences, and that Myanmar may eventually accept this latest fence if it drives away criminals and keeps its own people in the region.
“If Burma does not want its people to cross the border and there is a fence that will allow Burmese to stay and not let them run away, then Burma may not be unhappy with this fence,” said Wong Kyu Bo.
In the part of the fence that has been built, Chinese people give money to vendors on the other side of the fence through holes in the fence, Wong Kyu Bo said. Huang Kui Bo has toured the 2,227-kilometer-long border.
Analysts say Chinese officials have not officially announced the reasons for building this latest fence.
But Thant Myint U, a Burmese historian and former government official, said successive Chinese dynasties and governments have been trying to “consolidate” the border for thousands of years. The historian says the geographical barrier between Burma’s Irrawaddy River valley and China’s core population is being undermined.
Recent Comments