China’s Role in The Future of Myanmar
In my previous article, I wrote about the importance of China’s intervention in the democratic movement in Myanmar. Frankly, the democratic movement in Myanmar is facing a tall order by fighting against the military using non-violent methods like protests and strikes. The military got its power not from the people but from its internal ranks and capacity for violence. As long as the army is under one command and has its instrument of violence, the military rule could continue.
It was due to the remarkable endurance of the democratic movement that Myanmar could enter its quasi-democratic era in 2015. Without a clear insistence on democracy, Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s army) might not ever compromise and let Myanmar hold an election.
However, the latest coup shows that Tatmadaw still holds the highest power in Myanmar. In this case, the election can happen, as long as the army tolerates the result. Some democracy can exist, but Myanmar can fall to yet another military rule if the army wants it. It is clear that a true democracy cannot exist as long as the army still holds its power.
This is why most military states crumble or change only when they have faced significant damage to their army. They need to either lost a war or suffer an internal attack to submit to civilian rule. This is extremely hard to do in Myanmar. Why is that?
First, the democratic movement does not have an armed wing, which makes the movement incapable of mounting armed opposition to the army. They can rally the people in urban areas, but they are basically unarmed civilians fighting against armed military groups. They cannot win with peaceful rallies alone.
Second, the insurgent armies, which have weapons, are separated by ethnic lines and scattered among remote areas. This creates a considerable gap between the ethnic insurgent armies and the urban democratic movement, geographically and politically. For ethnic minority groups, after all, NLD is not necessarily their friend.
So their only hope is to unite the democratic movement in the urban areas and insurgent armies in the rural areas. This is exactly what they do right now with National Unity Government. The shadow government is making a coalition with ethnic minorities under the banner of federalism. Recently, they also said that they are forming a defense force, which supposedly utilizes ethnic insurgent groups as its core.
That being said, National Unity Government is still newly formed and we have not seen if the coalition would make an effective pushback against the Tatmadaw in the urban area. We surely hope they will, but it would be unreasonable to expect them to change the tides of the battle in such a short time.
In short, we cannot expect the movement to enact an effective armed insurgency against Tatmadaw in a short time. This makes it vital for Myanmar to seek an option outside violence. Or else they would be trapped in a vicious cycle of quasi-democracy and military rule.
This is where China becomes an important player.
Why China? China is the only country that can be significant enough to be an existential threat to Tatmadaw. China is Myanmar’s largest trading partner and second-largest investment source. It is not a stretch to say that China is the most important country in the world for Myanmar.
When the world isolated Myanmar after they undergo military rule. China was there to sustain Myanmar. If the international community treats Myanmar as a pariah state again, Tatmadaw knows that they can survive as long as China did not abandon them, just like before.
China also sees Myanmar as a very important ally, as their One Belt One Road project involves Myanmar and well, it is always important to have a good relationship with your neighbor. That is why they nurture the relationship with Myanmar both under democratic and military rule.
However, if China changes its stance, Tatmadaw would be in trouble. If China halts its trading with Myanmar, the whole economy would collapse, along with the conglomerates that the Tatmadaw owned. On the other hand, this risk of retaliation could also cause a rift within the army itself.
Let’s assume the army general refuses to give away his power even after China abandons them. What would happen then? The lower-ranked general would see little incentive to follow the general and the capitalists class outside the army would also see little reason to not use their influence against the general. A coup to oust the general out from the army could happen for a new government that could fulfill the interest of the stakeholders in Myanmar.
This is overall the model for the democratization of South Korea. After decades of military-backed government, the democratic movement reached its peak. Protests get intensive, especially after the death of a Seoul National University student, Bak Jong-Cheol. The intensive protest makes the US, the most important ally of South Korea at that time, inform the president that the US does not support the suppression of democratic voice anymore.
At that time, the Reagan administration was undergoing a shift in democratic policy. Rather than supporting US allies whatever they did, the US saw that a stable, democratic government would be preferable to combat Communist’s influence. Losing both the support from the US and facing protest in the country, the president realizes that its best option is to step down and start the democratization protest before they are forced to do so. That’s how South Korea could escape military rule with a relatively less violent method (relatively because it’s still violent, but at least it does not involve a war with the military).
Now the question is would China do it?
Would China do it?
If you see China’s action, you would see that China is far from being the most eager country to condemn Myanmar. They have refused to call what happened in Myanmar a coup (although they condemn the violence to the protester) and blocks the condemnation from the UN.
This is in line with China’s decades-old skepticism about international intervention. For China, international intervention could make things worse, which is not necessarily wrong considering international intervention has a long list of failures where things actually got worse post-intervention. Throughout the Cold War, Iraq War, the examples of the failures of international intervention are piling up.
China largely adheres to the non-intervention principle, oftentimes being a spoiler at the UN Security Council. While some exception was made to the application of this principle, China was mostly a non-interfering country.
However, China has not been so recently. We can see China being more interventionist in recent years to secure their interest., especially since they start the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. We can see instances like when they send a message to Brazil, recommending the silence on the reelection of Taiwan President, Tsai Ing-wen, or when they are using a hands-on approach to resolve a conflict in South Sudan.
With OBOR needing the active involvement of OBOR, we can only expect this involvement more. Chinese laborers are now working in OBOR-related projects all over the world, in Africa, South East Asia, and the Middle East. Securing Chinese citizens’ safety in cases of conflict, like when China evacuated their citizens from civil war in Libya, would require intervention, or else OBOR would lose its legitimacy inside.
In addition, to prevent the need for the intervention itself, China would need to be more active in the domestic politics of other countries. This was a very rare occasion for China in the past, done in a very dire circumstance like Korean War. However, recently, it is a geopolitical necessity, as one country pulling out of OBOR could be very significant.
Myanmar is not an exception here. Myanmar is an especially important part of One Belt One Road initiative as a neighbor country of China. Many Chinese citizens and diasporas also live in Myanmar. With the numerous projects, trading partners, and inherent geopolitical interest that China has over Myanmar, what China prioritizes the most there is stability and a close relationship.
To achieve that, it honestly does not need a democratic government. When Myanmar became a military state, China is one of the few countries that still reach out and make a partnership with Tatmadaw. Most of the modern bilateral relationship between China and Myanmar is done between PRC and Tatmadaw.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that China sees a major improvement in its relation with Myanmar when Aun San Suu Kyi was in charge. Experts believe that if they can choose, China would prefer dealing with the National League of Democracy (NLD) instead of Tatmadaw.
For Aun San Suu Kyi, China is the default partner since the west has abandoned her after her support of the military’s action in Rohingya. She also sees China’s importance in Myanmar’s growth, shown in the agreement on the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and various infrastructure projects. On the other hand, for China, siding with ASSK earns goodwill for most Myanmar citizens, who support Myanmar’s policies on Rohingya and previously holds suspicion to China due to decades of supporting Tatmadaw.
Despite the benefits, the risk of deeper instability due to intervention still persists. While China does not hold back on intervention as much as before, they still would not want to act unless the outcome of the intervention is clear. Unless they know that the intervention would result in a government that wants to work with China, they would not intervene.
Waiting on the sideline also brings its cost as well. China’s silence and its hesitance to condemn the coup are being perceived by the mass in Myanmar as a support to the Tatmadaw. Bringing suspicions, sinophobia, and hatred boiling to the surface. Sometimes this manifested in an ugly way, like how the protestors in Myanmar attack a Chinese factory or Chinese-descent citizens.
All these times, infrastructure development from China has not been received in Myanmar warmly. Issues like forced relocation, socio-environment impacts from the development, and human rights violations amidst China’s infrastructure projects in Myanmar foster grounds for negative sentiments in Myanmar against China.
The landmark case of Myitsone Dam is the significant turning point in the China-Myanmar relationship. For the first time, the rejection on the ground was able to stop an infrastructure project. It was one of the most high-profile failures for Chinese infrastructure projects, one that happens because China underestimates the voice at the grassroots level.
This moment taught China that engaging with the civil society of Myanmar is important to sustain their long-term interest in Myanmar. However, they will find out that it is not that easy.
Complicating Factor: Sinophobia in Myanmar
Myanmar’s sentiment towards China has not necessarily amicable for a long time, to say the least. Anti-Chinese Riot in 1967, oppositions to China’s infrastructure projects, and riots in Chinese factory after the coup show that many are not really a fan of China’s influence in Myanmar.
How did this happen?
One of the main causes of the modern Anti-China sentiment in Myanmar is China’s partnership with the Tatmadaw. China was the lifeline for the military government when they were the pariah of the international community due to military rule. With the military rule being very unpopular in Myanmar, China just cannot help but catching the hate from the Myanmar civilians.
Second, China’s projects often got agrarian and environmental conflicts with Myanmar citizens during the development. Confiscation of lands for Chinese companies and projects, environmental impacts like soil erosion and pollution, and extraction of raw materials in Myanmar to China create various conflicts between China development plans and civil society of Myanmar. Myitsone Dam’s failure, for example, was a result of a protest against environmental issues, like the potential impact of flooding and disruption of river flow, and agrarian issues (development without consent of the community).
Third, the Chinese migration of laborers to Myanmar intensifies the already existing sinophobia in Myanmar. It is a phenomenon we can see in almost all of Southeast Asia. In China’s development project and factory, we usually see Chinese workers there. In some cases, the number of Chinese workers could overwhelm the local workers. This practice draws scorn from the local population, which saw the Chinese workers as job-stealers amidst the unemployment in the country.
Xenophobia happens everywhere, but arguably this phenomenon is slightly different. Most of the migrant workers in China are sent by the government to works abroad. The Chinese workers see their job as a temporary duty. This creates less incentive for them to integrate into the local community; which means they don’t create an opportunity to create cultural and economical bonds with the locals.
This is different from Chinese diasporas in the past. While they might live in a specific territory like Chinatown, they were also building their life there. Their children will go to public/private school and engaging with the local community is inevitable. In other words, integration with the local community does happen and mitigate the conflict.
Well, but as we know, even that does not necessarily stop sinophobia everywhere. But now Chinese workers are basically living in the bubble and barely make any effort to integrate socially and economically. This results in heightened sinophobia in developing countries.
How does this sinophobia come into play here? Well, for one, this could reduce the urgency to help Myanmar among Chinese citizens. Seeing the hostility Myanmar people show to China, nationalists in China would be less thrilled to push for China to extend their help.
This sinophobia also can be a factor that tips things against Tatmadaw’s favor. If the violence against Chinese and Chinese-descent in Myanmar keeps happening, this can be read as Tatamadaw’s incompetence in protecting Chinese citizens in Myanmar. Comparatively, siding with NLD can at least mitigate such violent tendencies.
On the other hand, if Tatmadaw can rein in the violence by force, it could foster even more anti-china sentiment in Myanmar. People would see that Tatmadaw is treating people as a second-class citizens in favor of the Chinese. The image of China as Tatamadaw’s benefactor — that has been shed a bit after working with NLD — would return to another high.
China’s Choices
Right now, China can make a choice between two scenarios: one is a scenario that supports the objectively better partner in Myanmar by abandoning its old partner. The risk is not low, if the civilian government still loses after support from China, the relationship is ruined forever. However, the reward is high. They can work with a more stable, competent government, that can secure the long-term interests of China.
On the other hand, they can be more passive, doing the bare minimum while waiting until the dust is settled to support whoever wins the conflict. It is certain that China and Myanmar’s relation will face some setbacks, but it would never be as bad as the worst case in the former scenario.
As we start to shift our attention to newer issues, people in Myanmar are still doing their best to struggle. National Unity Guard, a coalition of elected parliamentarians and armed ethnic groups is moving to make a new federal army. Some groups of civilians are getting training from ethnic armies to fight against Tatmadaw. It won’t be long until protestors fight with not only chants and rallies but also rifles and bullets.
Before the situation gets more violent and irreparable damage is done, China can make a choice. What would it be?
