Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (12 page)

Initially, the coup plotters were broadly given the benefit of the doubt. Many years later, Maung Maung reported that “People heard the announcement without surprise, for they had for some time been expecting, almost hoping for, a change.”
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From a man who spent a lifetime working for Ne Win, this evaluation comes as no surprise. Yet it was also the assessment of contemporary scholars. Badgley wrote that the coup was greeted with “reserved approval by most articulate Burmese.” The caretaker regime of 1958–60 was generally felt to have done a decent job, the new leaders were “well-known and respected for their integrity,” and the Nu government had lost its way.
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Trager, who visited Burma at the end of March 1962, concurs: “there seemed to be little surface or undersurface expression of hostility to the coup. If anything, there was a feeling of relief: at least the slide downward would be stopped.”
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A little later, David W. Chang noted that the domestic situation was similar to that which had generated military coups in Pakistan and South Korea in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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In some circumstances, he argued, “The coup is a necessary link in the process of modernization.”
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Soon, however, Burma’s RC proved to have a radical agenda congruent with extreme variants of left-wing nationalist sentiment formed during the independence struggle. Buddhism’s status as state religion was quickly rescinded, and on April 30, 1962 the RC promulgated a vague
Burmese Way to Socialism
.
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Although federal features survived in the peripheral patchwork of ethnic nationality states, power rapidly shifted to a control system of Security and Administration Committees headed by military commanders and reaching to ward and village level.
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As Cady notes, “Organizationally, Ne Win’s government was patterned on Eastern European practices; ideologically it borrowed from the People’s Republic of China.”
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On July 7, 1962 the RC revealed clear repressive intent by killing dozens of protesting and then rioting Rangoon University students, and detonating the students’ union building on campus.
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In the same month it also formed a Burma Socialist Programme Party (or
Lanzin
Party) to exercise single-party rule under RC guidance and signal a formal break with capitalism.
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In 1962–63, real attempts were made to nationalize major business enterprises. In March 1963, a
New York Times
article reported on “total socialism in Burma.”
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Less than 12 months later, Josef Silverstein noted that “experiments and modifications continued as the drive to socialize the economy pressed blindly ahead and social tensions and terror mounted as efforts to end insurgency and disunity failed.”
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Looking back from 2006, Thant Myint-U wrote that “With the racetrack shut, the beauty pageants over, jobs lost, scholarship opportunities gone, and only beer from the People’s Brewery and Distillery left to drink, it was as if someone had just turned off the lights on a chaotic and often corrupt but nevertheless vibrant and competitive society.”
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From the outset the new politico-military elite was ardently nationalistic, with close ties to agrarian Buddhist Burmans forming the core of a
tatmadaw
of just over 100,000 men, and a “proclivity … to encourage a Burmese way of life [that] suggests a revulsion from western ways.”
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In 1962, Ford, Fulbright and Asia Foundation activities were terminated.
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In 1963–64, an estimated 300,000 Indians fled following nationalization of their small trading and manufacturing concerns.
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Many Chinese and Pakistanis also left.
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It was not unlike President Idi Amin’s expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972.
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Serious race riots, directed mostly at the remaining Chinese community, scarred Rangoon in June-July 1967. Abandoning political discussions with ethnic nationality leaders in 1963–64 and focusing on military responses to insurgency, the RC at the end of the 1960s unleashed a “four cuts” strategy designed to eliminate the supply of food, funds, intelligence and recruits from villagers to militias.
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Policies of aggressive autarky ensured that the country quickly turned in on itself. Large-scale joint ventures with private foreign firms ended in January 1965 when the Burma Corporation and Burma Unilever were nationalized. Supplementing a 1964 ban on English-medium instruction at all levels of the education system, elite private schools were taken into public ownership in April 1965, and libraries run by India, Russia, the UK and the US were closed in September 1965. Visas for western tourists were limited to a transit time of 24 hours, and visitors rarely made trips beyond Rangoon.
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In early 1965, Badgley noted that the colonial legacy had been largely obliterated. “The men of commerce, the civil service, the law schools and Sandhurst were the source of support and means of rule for the British colonialists, as well as the AFPFL. Such men govern India and Pakistan today. But in Burma we are witnessing the recreation of a new Burman dynasty.”
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Tinker’s optimism entirely evaporated: “Burma in 1966 is a hermit land. While the storm blows in South-East Asia, Burma closes the door and hopes that one day the sun will shine.”
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Soon the dominant issue was economic calamity induced by the command economy. The critical rice sector was placed under strict control. While collectivization programs were limited, leaving production mainly in private hands, trade nationalization was extensive, compelling farmers to sell their entire marketable surplus to the state through a low-price procurement system. The intention was to channel significant profits from rice exports into broad-based modernization through an import substitution industrialization policy.
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However, ideological rigidity combined with rank incompetence and a measure of official greed and corruption made the outcome quite different. Never was full control established, and where it was farmers had little incentive to boost yields.
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Exports thus collapsed from more than 1.4 million tons in 1963–64 to fewer than 0.4 million tons in 1967–68. After a brief revival, they fell still further to just over 0.1 million tons in 1973–74.
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The decline was 72 percent in four years, and 93 percent in 10 years. What had been a 28 percent share of the global rice trade in the early 1950s shrank to 2 percent in 1970.
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At the same time, Burma slipped from high-quality to low-quality shipments. In place of booming official exports came restricted production, illegal domestic and cross-border trade, hoarding and waste. Peter John Perry writes that “export rice was the great failure of Ne Win’s economic policy.”
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Burma’s other two major sectors, minerals and timber, fared less badly, but were still major disappointments. Moreover, industrialization never took off, and only inefficient state-owned enterprises littered the landscape.
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Yet greater problems were experienced in meeting people’s core needs. Noting that the regime’s record on the production side was “dismal,” Perry argues that “When it comes to distribution catastrophe is a more appropriate word.”
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Informal markets in basic goods spread rapidly as problems of allocation through people’s stores mounted. Shortages became legion and by the mid-1960s Trade Corporation 23, code for a thriving black market covering both domestic and imported goods, was a standard feature of daily life.
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Indeed, here and in the unregulated small business and transportation sectors was the core of the real economy.
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Riots were reported in 20 towns in 1968, and further disturbances followed.
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The result was never anything more than nominally socialist. Rather, the system became a harshly authoritarian, highly centralized and deeply dysfunctional form of state capitalism.
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Moreover, the plentiful information flows and invisible-hand signaling mechanisms generated by capitalism rarely functioned because of bureaucratic ineptitude and fear of sending bad news up the government hierarchy. The situation was not unlike that reached in East-Central Europe by the 1980s, with rigid ideology, dull centralization and systemic incapacity combining to smother human innovation and energy.

Already at the end of 1965 Ne Win stated publicly that the economy was “in a mess.” “If Burma were not a country with an abundance of food we would be starving.”
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Landless agricultural laborers, long some 30–40 percent of rural households, were very badly affected.
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However, the regime ascribed visible shortfalls to teething problems, and decreed no major change. Instead, a corrupt system of concealment at grassroots levels and graded forms of relative privilege at higher levels was allowed to develop, again similar to that witnessed under Soviet-style communism. Perhaps Burma’s sole distinction was the speed with which decline spread. The economy taken over in 1962 provided the RC with quite a fragile base. Before long many essential supports had been destroyed.

Socialist Burma

In the late 1960s the extent of economic malfunction obliged the regime to relax some controls, and the early 1970s saw military government given a civilian makeover. In June-July 1971 the BSPP, latterly changed from a small vanguard party to a nascent mass party with nearly 75,000 full members, held its first national congress.
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On April 20, 1972, General Ne Win reverted to civilian status as U Ne Win, and 20 senior aides followed suit. Following a successful December 1973 referendum, a new constitution for the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma was promulgated on January 3, 1974. It created a unicameral People’s Assembly and a network of People’s Councils, all nominally elected, and formally imposed legislative control on an already emasculated judiciary. On this basis, the RC was dissolved in March 1974, and power passed to the new socialist institutions. The 1974 constitution also partially reconfigured territorial politics through seven ethnic nationality states (Arakan, Chin, Kachin, Karen, Kayah, Mon and Shan), and seven Burman divisions. Subsequently, the Burma Citizenship Law 1982 identified 135 ethnic groups couched within eight major national races.
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Slowly the country began to open up. In 1971 “mutually beneficial economic relations” between foreign firms and the Burmese public sector were permitted, though only West German armaments manufacturer Fritz Werner, with personal contacts to Ne Win, was allowed to enter.
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Bridges were also rebuilt with neighbors.
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Economic aid resumed through World Bank assistance in 1972 and Asian Development Bank membership in 1973. Pointing to the future, contracts for oil exploration and production were signed with foreign companies in April 1974. Already from July 1969 tourist visas of up to 72 hours were issued, with visitors encouraged to look beyond Rangoon in the still limited time available.
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By the mid-1970s, though, when one-week visas were issued, arrival numbers had only climbed to 1,500 per month.
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Counted among them was Paul Theroux, who in
The Great Railway Bazaar
recorded his train journey from Rangoon via Mandalay and Maymyo to Gokteik Gorge close to the Shan border with China.
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In late 1974, student and worker protests erupted when no more than perfunctory funeral rites were performed for U Thant, UN Secretary-General from 1961 to 1971.
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Open dissent flared again in 1975 and 1976.
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In 1976–77, young army officers were sentenced for plotting a coup.
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