Hyderabad: Driven by security concerns, economic interests and a desire for political influence in a country with which it shares a 1,500-mile border, China is reportedly playing a key role in Myanmar’s internal security and peace process. Armed clashes between Myanmar’s military and ethnic armed groups along the Myanmar-China border occasionally spill into China.
China has also come to the defence of the Myanmar government over the crisis in Rakhine State to the west, where the Tatmadaw has carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, against the mostly Muslim Rohingya population. China has protected Myanmar from sanctions at the United Nations and has offered rhetorical and material support for its handling of the so-called terrorist attacks.
China has extensive economic interests in Rakhine, including a major port at Kyaukphyu, a planned special economic zone (SEZ), and a road, rail, and pipeline network to move energy and other materials and supplies from the Bay of Bengal through Myanmar to Yunnan Province.
China’s role in and perspectives toward Myanmar’s internal conflicts may offer important insights into overall conflict dynamics inside the country and help inform potential US peace-support policies going forward.
China has set aside its stated adherence to the principle of noninterference to become more proactively and assertively involved in Myanmar’s peace process.
Myanmar considers China’s engagement to be constructive overall.
The Rohingya crisis has provided China with an opportunity to re-establish its primacy among Myanmar’s foreign relationships, attract popular support in Myanmar, and assert its leadership in regional affairs.
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Private actors within China and outside official control also contribute to conflict, including illicit cross-border trade and mercenary services.
China has strengthened the central direction over Myanmar policy in the past decade, ensuring improved coordination and control of the diplomatic, military, and economic aspects of its relationship with Myanmar.
Even as Beijing strengthens ties with Myanmar’s government and military, a number of domestic factors will continue to constrain Chinese influence in the country.
Myanmar’s approach to China reflects its historical suspicion of big powers and its desire to fiercely protect its national sovereignty. Its geographic location between India and China and its experience over the centuries of foreign invasion, colonization, and political pressure from various countries have made Burmese leaders wary of foreign intentions and fearful of their country’s becoming a pawn of foreign powers.
Sharing a 1,500-mile land border, China and Burma have been inextricably linked for centuries through politics, war, bloodlines, and commerce. From the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty in the late thirteenth century through the Qing dynasty in the 1760s, China repeatedly attempted to conquer Burma, yet geographical obstacles such as mountain ranges and rivers proved unsuitable for large-scale military action.
The two sides signed a peace treaty in 1769, and Burma had loose tributary ties to China until the British colonized it in 1885. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, China and Burma increased contact via borderland horse caravans, rebels, and refugees that moved between Yunnan and northern Burma as a result of ongoing wars in China and expanded bilateral trade.
Chinese immigration to Burma increased during the colonial period, as it did in many Southeast Asian states. As a result, many of the same ethnic groups in Burma also are in China, and the border creates opportunities for smuggling, illegal activities, and investment that strongly affect Sino-Burmese relations today
Post-colonial Burma was among the first non-communist countries to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) following its establishment in October 1949. Burma and China established official diplomatic relations in 1950, and the Yangon government coined the term pauk phaw to describe the friendly (fraternal) relationship between the two countries.
China’s relations with Myanmar also improved following their respective crackdowns on political reform movements in the late 1980s that resulted in the international isolation of both.
China supplied Myanmar with military assistance that was no longer available from Western countries and pursued broad military cooperation with the military government. Since the late 1980s, China has been a major supplier of military hardware to Myanmar, providing more than 90 per cent of its military transport.
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China’s military sales also include anti-ship cruise missiles, targeting radar, naval guns, and corvettes.
Myanmar bought $1.4 billion arms from China between 2000 and 2016, approximately $1 billion since 2011, when Thein Sein became president.
China also used its permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council to shield Myanmar from international condemnation and sanctions in the 1990s through the 2000s.
China's interests in Myanmar
Beijing has several clear strategic interests in Myanmar: stability on its shared border, access to the Indian Ocean, and a wide variety of economic interests.
China is keenly focused on maintaining security and stability along its porous border with Myanmar.
Access to the Indian ocean
Myanmar’s lengthy coastline along the Bay of Bengal is integral to China’s efforts to secure multiple points of access to the Indian Ocean. This access is critical for enhancing trade and interregional economic connectivity, supporting Chinese naval activities, and furthering China’s objectives. Myanmar’s Kyaukphyu port project on the Bay of Bengal can reduce the shipping costs of imported goods and oil from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, to inland Chinese provinces.
China has long coveted such a direct outlet to the Indian Ocean. But Chinese investment in Myanmar’s ports is unlikely to lead to a permanent Chinese military presence there, given that Myanmar’s 2008 constitution prohibits the presence of foreign troops on its territory. Nevertheless, Myanmar experts and officials have raised concerns that Myanmar risks falling into a debt trap over the project, citing the case of the Hambantota port, which Sri Lanka handed over to China on a ninety-nine-year lease in 2017. This, they say, is what could happen were Myanmar to default on its debt repayments.
Economic interests
China also has significant economic interests in Myanmar, particularly in the resource-rich northern areas. For decades, China has been investing in, extracting, and importing natural resources, including jade, lumber, metals, and oil. Bilateral trade totalled $10.8 billion in the fiscal year 2016–2017, according to Myanmar’s official statistics, the bulk of it passing through Muse and other border towns in northern Myanmar into Yunnan.
Trade with Myanmar is particularly important for Yunnan: although it is less than 1 per cent of China’s total trade volume, it accounts for 24 per cent of Yunnan’s. Myanmar is thus important to Yunnan’s economic growth, and Yunnan is both one of China’s poorest provinces and a key priority in the PRC’s national development plans.
China is also a market for illicit cross-border trade in drugs, logging, wildlife, charcoal, jade, and other gems. Transnational organized crime actors from China are known to have been “deeply and intimately involved” in these illegal economies for decades.
Neither government provides figures for illicit cross-border trade, but both acknowledge it.
One of China’s key strategic moves in Myanmar is its plan to construct a deepwater port at Kyaukphyu. The Kyaukphyu deep-sea port in the Bay of Bengal, a $7.3 billion project, is an important entry point for the China-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines and other commercial activity to fuel the development of China’s southwest.
Chinese companies have also invested in twin oil and gas pipelines to bring crude oil from the Middle East and Africa and natural gas from offshore Myanmar to Kunming for consumption in China. Myanmar, which has proven reserves of twenty-three trillion cubic feet of natural gas, is an important regional source of gas for China.
Geostrategic interests
China’s Geostrategic interests lead it to seek privileged access and influence inside Myanmar and to diminish the influence of Western countries, particularly the United States, and especially along Myanmar’s border with China.
In early 2016, for instance, the newly arrived PRC ambassador repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) urged the US ambassador not to travel to Kachin or eastern parts of Shan states because the United States “should respect China’s interests”—implying that China deserved to have predominant presence and influence in these areas, if not elsewhere in Myanmar, regardless of the wishes or interests of Myanmar, let alone the interests of other countries.
India's interest in Myanmar
India sees itself as competing with China for influence in Myanmar. Viewing Myanmar as part of its sphere of influence, India feels threatened by China’s penetration of Myanmar and increasing naval presence in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.
India and Myanmar, once a single territory under British colonial rule, share deep historical ties, democratic institutions, familial linkages, and more recently a common objective of preventing China from becoming the regional hegemon.
India is also concerned about its northeast and Myanmar’s Naga minority, which has had relations with Indian Naga insurgents and has often operated out of bases inside Myanmar. However, informed observers argue that India is punching below its weight and underperforming in Myanmar. This is primarily because Indian policymakers have not paid enough attention to Myanmar, and Indian trade and investment in Myanmar pale in comparison to those of China.
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As China becomes more involved in conflict zones around the world, its engagement in Myanmar has been particularly direct and influential.
That Myanmar sits on China’s border creates a unique dynamic that sets China’s interests and role in Myanmar apart from its objectives and influence in other conflict-affected countries.
The United States should pay attention to the impact of China’s role in Myanmar’s internal conflicts given the broader US interest in the success of Myanmar’s peace efforts and overall reform experiment. To that end, the United States should sustain long-term and high-level engagement on a wide range of political, social, economic, and security issues to help Myanmar through its difficult transition, at all times making clear that the only way to achieve lasting peace is through a common commitment to justice, compromise, mutual respect, and equal rights and equal protection for all of Myanmar’s diverse people.
