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The Chinese official media have carefully avoided reporting on internal developments in Myanmar including transition towards democracy. The main reporting have been broadly on bilateral relations. Difficulty in bilateral relations like on the Mytsone dam have been reported briefly.
Censorship of news, however, cannot work in China any longer. The World Wide Web has ensured that. Chinese netizens will certainly take note of the reality that while political activists in neighbouring Myanmar are being set free from prisons to participate in national politics, their own people who ask their voices to be heard are being incarcerated, tortured, jailed and reportedly even eliminated by the state. Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel Prize speech puts will the Chinese scenario in stark contrast.
The ongoing political changes in Myanmar would certainly impact Sino-Myanmar strategic relations. Of course, the changes in Myanmar are not yet irreversible. But the manner in which Senior Gen. Than Swe engineered the process suggested that he had this challenge in mind. The process, therefore, was very deliberate and Suu Kyi responded appropriately. There are of course, many challenges ahead especially in the constitution in the run up to the 2015 elections.
It is well known that the isolated Myanmar’s military run government became almost a captive state of China. It is also known that the relationship was not always smooth. But it was inevitable. Oil, gas and mineral rich Myanmar, with its abundance of fine timber, and occupying a very geographically strategic position was a boon for China. As a Chinese commentator remarked, Myanmar is of major strategic value to China.
China has invested heavily in Myanmar, but much of it has been exploitative and without consideration for environmental degradation. This is a particular reason for Myanmar suspending work on Mytsone dam after locals agitated. The electricity produced would go to China’s province bordering Myanmar. The Chinese invested $3.2 billion dollars in the project and were outraged, and are pressing Naypyidaw to resurrect the project.
Another major project is the oil and gas pipe lines being laid from Kyapkpyu in Rakhine state to Kunming to transfer a large part of its oil and gas imports instead of using the longer and pirate prone route through the Malacca straits. Myanmar has also been dependent on China for its defence needs. There are a large number of other areas of cooperation.
Chinese strategic advances in Myanmar have concerns for neighbours like India. It has been persistent in trying to build military facilities especially a port, and posting a detachment of its navy in Myanmar’s waters on the pretext of safeguarding its investment and assets in the country. Naypyidaw has resisted these moves.
A proposal from Beijing is still pending to build a road from Kunming to Bangladesh’s eastern coast through Myanmar. Bangladesh has agreed to this and to the Chinese proposal to build a deep water port in Sonadia near Chittagong by China. Myanmar has yet to permit the road project though its territory. A Chinese built deep water port in Bangladesh is a concern for the region. It would replicate China’s construction of the Gwadar port in Pakistan with hardly any cost to Pakistan. It is also seen by strategic experts as a chain of Chinese naval assets if the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka is included. This may be read with Chinese intentions to build ports or naval bases in the western Indian Ocean countries like Seychelles.
A Chinese port in Bangladesh is almost certain to draw the US in especially with the new US views of joining the Indian Ocean with the Pacific. Both Bangladesh and Myanmar will have to take this into consideration.
As Myanmar re-enters the international community China’s almost total domination in the country is under challenge. Of course, both the US and China have said that the change in Myanmar will not bring them into conflict.
But that is diplomatic talk. Myanmar is a member of the ASEAN and will take over its ASEAN chairmanship in 2014. It is, therefore, an active participant in western pacific, and it is also pertinent in the Indian Ocean.
India is equally and extremely interested in Myanmar in terms of its security and its Look East economic policy. It is well known that Myanmar was a conduit for India’s north-east insurgents to travel to China to procure arms and communication equipment. Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh laid out a road map from India to South East Asia through Myanmar during his recent visit to Naypyidaw where he met both President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Is there full trust between Myanmar and China? Definitely not. At the same time the two countries have interdependence. What the changes in Myanmar portend is that it is no longer China’s kitchen garden. The impact of the new Myanmar on China will be considerable.
Courtesy : South Asia Analysis Group
20-June-2012