The situation in Myanmar is growing hotter by the day. The international community has called on the United Nations to intervene militarily, while several armed ethnic groups in Burma have come out shouting threats to support Burmese protesters against the junta. Meanwhile, the U.S. Burmese community has accused the Chinese Communist Party of meddling in Burmese affairs, supporting the coup junta, and disrupting Burma’s democratic process, among other things.
Burmese widely accuse Beijing of supporting the junta’s coup. Photo shows the Burmese community in Los Angeles protesting in front of the Chinese Consulate on March 31, 2021. (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Burmese Democracy Group)
The situation in Burma is getting hotter by the day. Pictured are pro-democracy demonstrators protesting in Yangon being suppressed by police. (Associated Press, March 27, 2021)
Beijing’s “interests in Burma are paramount”
Burmese have long accused the Chinese Communist Party of being inextricably linked to the military coup and subsequent chaos in Burma.
According to an article in the Myanmar Times, the West began to alienate Myanmar after the Rohingya incident, which forced the NLD government to change its past caution and start relying on Chinese funding to sustain the country’s construction and economic development. Later, Myanmar was included in more and more projects in China’s Belt and Road “China-Myanmar Economic Corridor”, and more than 90 percent of the major energy development projects in the previous and last year were single-handedly undertaken by Chinese state-owned enterprises and related companies.
Liu Zhongn, senior reporter for The Myanmar Times. (Voice of America March 2021 file photo)
Liu Zhongen, a senior reporter for The Myanmar Times, told Voice of America that, in fact, there is no clear evidence of Beijing’s support behind this military coup in Burma; however, China has used non-interference in internal affairs as a reason not to voice criticism, both at the United Nations and in the international community, and “Western countries, including the United States, have taken a stand to condemn it, while China does not take a stand, does not condemn it, and does not pressure. So, the Burmese in particular think that if you don’t take a stand does that mean you’re behind the coup?”
Liu Zhongen said that other Asian countries, such as Japan, were silent at first and did not take a stand until March 27, when more than 100 people were killed by the military, “but there has always been anti-China sentiment in Burma, and in the 2000s, China’s involvement in the construction of the Myitsone hydropower plant, which would actually send most of the electricity back to China, led to accusations of Chinese exploitation and misuse of resources, which led to massive anti-China demonstrations until 2011. This led to massive anti-China demonstrations until September 2011, when Burmese President Thein Sein announced in parliament that the hydropower plant would be halted for the duration of his presidency. That was the moment when anti-China sentiment in Burma reached its peak, and although the fever has since subsided, it has not gone away.”
Joy Joy Yang, an ethnic Burmese who just graduated from the Johns Hopkins University Master’s Program in Advanced International Studies, told Voice of America that the China-Myanmar relationship is complex and requires a more nuanced understanding: “There are many interests within Burma, and Beijing is not just dealing with the military government, it is also dealing with the democratically elected government and also with the different It also deals with different ethnic minority groups along the China-Myanmar border. So, there are complex interactions.”
Yang Bang Hong, a Burmese-American master’s graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. (Courtesy of myself)
According to Yang Bang Hong, Beijing has been very pragmatic in its dealings with Burma, “Beijing knows how to work with different stakeholders. It has a lot of strategic and economic interests in Myanmar, and whoever is in power needs to be able to make those interests continue to prosper. But what is happening is that they need to deal with the military and are pressured by the situation to interact with it.”
The Myanmar Times said that for China, whoever is in power in Myanmar, as long as the situation is stabilized as soon as possible, China will be the one to benefit, so “the Chinese official media avoided talking about the ‘coup’ after the coup, only downplaying it as a ‘major cabinet reshuffle China has also blocked several U.N. statements condemning Burma and has blocked any resolution against Burma from being enacted.”
Sun Yun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and co-director of the East Asia Institute, told the Voice of America that it does not matter who is in power, “what China wants most is for the situation in Burma to be stable so that it can achieve the interests it seeks.”
The Burmese military has been sanctioned by some Western countries since it seized power, but it still holds the lifeblood of the country’s economy, with the Myanmar Economic Holding Corporation and the Myanmar Economic Corporation guaranteeing it a steady stream of cash.
During a visit to Myanmar in January, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he supported “the Burmese military’s mission of national revitalization,” which was seen as an act of defending “a military dictator that has been heavily criticized by the international community.
Beijing and the Burmese Parties on the Hill
Derek Mitchell, a former U.S. ambassador to Burma, told the New York Times that “there is no question that the Chinese government considers Burma to be within their sphere of influence.
Sun Yun of the Stimson Center said, “As for the various parties involved in Burma, let’s say the Tatmadaw and the NLD have been fighting for many years; the ethnic Burmese and the ethnic minorities have been fighting for many centuries, all to no avail, so China is not going to bother with the entanglements.”
Sun Yun said that despite this, the Chinese government certainly has a close and distant judgment of the ethnic minority forces on all sides in Myanmar, for example, the Wa are considered, and in fact are, “firm followers and defenders of the Beijing government”; the Kachin, who have long been influenced by Western religious culture and have closer ties with the West, are classified by Beijing as The Kachin, who have long been influenced by Western religious culture and have closer ties with the West, are classified by Beijing as “not standing firm”; and the Kokang, who once “embarrassed” the Chinese government internationally because of the Peng Jiasheng incident.
The New York Times said that when Xi Jinping visited Myanmar last year, the Burmese military complained to him about Chinese funding of the rebels.
Me Me Khant, a Burmese-born graduate student in international policy at Stanford University (photo courtesy of myself)
Me Me Khant, an ethnic Burmese graduate student in international policy at Stanford University, told the Voice of America, “You see that Beijing will support different groups behind the scenes …… Since the 1960s, Beijing has been supporting some of the insurgent forces, like the Wa army and things like that, by providing them with weapons and equipment.”
Canter said that while Beijing’s support for various forces is profit-seeking, it cannot be said that it does not affect the situation in Burma, “It still affects the balance between the various factions in Burma …… and Beijing will build alliances with any institution, government or private, political party or local armed forces, as long as can support the CCP’s interests in Burma.”
There are reportedly roughly two dozen larger armed ethnic groups in Burma that have been fighting the Burmese military government. These groups are ethnically diverse, with different demands and goals, and the relationships among them are intricate, though they all need access to more weapons.
Liu Zhongn of the Myanmar Times said there are larger strategic interests behind Beijing’s support for the armed ethnic groups, “There are some ethnic armed groups on the China-Myanmar border that can exchange weapons for benefits, and these armed groups can help smuggle some of the black goods, the natural resources of Myanmar, into China. Burma has a very large informal economy, about 40% of GDP is informal economy, every year there are a lot of jade, gem mines and other smuggling into China, ethnic armed groups also with China to do these interests in exchange. In addition, by taking control of these armed groups, China is able to exert pressure on the central government of Burma. If you don’t pass my large-scale projects, I will give more weapons to the ethnic local armed groups to make trouble.”
Uncertainty grows in Beijing over Myanmar chaos
The New York Times said that during Xi’s state visit to Myanmar last January, China signed a series of agreements with Myanmar, including rail and port projects, “which are part of China’s “One Belt, One Road” plan to extend its own economic corridor to the Indian Ocean. “
Bilahari Kausikan, a former Singaporean diplomat, told the New York Times that the fate of these projects is now fraught with uncertainty, “They have spent a lot of energy and time building relationships with the Aung San Suu Kyi government, with some success… . and now they have to start from scratch with a new group of generals, which is not easy for anyone.”
Yang Bang Hong of Johns Hopkins University said, “Beijing and the Burmese junta seem to have a close relationship, but the two sides are nothing more than a marriage of convenience. The Burmese junta does not necessarily like being led by Beijing’s nose all the time. The reason why the junta initiated political reforms in 2010 was to avoid being pulled too far away by Chinese influence.”
The New York Times says China has sought to turn Burma into an easy neighbor.
“Deutsche Welle quoted analysts as saying, “For the military, they have always been highly sensitive to matters that endanger national sovereignty. …… For decades, the Burmese military has been battling underground forces backed by China. fighting a battle.”
Yun Sun, senior fellow and co-director of the Stimson Center’s East Asia Institute. (Courtesy of myself)
Sun Yun of the Stimson Center told VOA that while China’s best hope for stability in Burma is that neither the military government nor the democratically elected interim government has the will to sit down and negotiate with each other, “the only option, then, is for the Burmese people to want the international community to intervene by force. But the U.S. government is not in a position to send troops, either diplomatically or politically, and China and Russia would certainly not agree if the UN pushed for forceful intervention. For China, after all, Burma is in China’s backyard.”
Sun Yun pointed out that with the current situation in Myanmar, the Burmese military government may also achieve some degree of stability if it suppresses forcefully; or drive the people back home and impose martial law. However, any such result would be one-sided and the method of achieving stability would be unstable.
What China wants is military and political unity, but it is seen as appropriate to step in and facilitate it,” Sun Xun said. But the Burmese military thinks I have the guns, so why should I accept unification? If China asks the military to negotiate terms with the NLD, the military will be unhappy and have microaggressions that will damage the relationship with the military. This consequence is definitely not acceptable to China. So, China wants stability, but if it needs to make trade-offs, it will look more at the relationship with various forces, so it will not use the demand for stability to force any side in order to get results.”
Analysis by networks that support China’s expanding influence in Myanmar says that the country’s “national attributes are always a lot more inscrutable in a country where Buddhism is the core of the culture ……”
One thing is certain, Sun Yun said, “and that is that China does not need to pull the strings if it wants to use Burma now, because Burma is already isolated from the West. Especially after the coup, the military is begging for a helping hand from China.”
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