Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (25 page)

Considerable controversy surrounds some large-scale projects mounted by state-owned Chinese enterprises in recent years. One is planned development of seven dams in Kachin State by a joint venture between Myanmar’s Ministry of Electric Power, crony-capitalist Asia World Company, and China Power Investment Corporation. Construction of Myitsone Dam on the Ayeyawady River just to the north-east of Myitkyina was launched in May 2007. Work on some of the six other dams on its two main tributaries soon followed. All are being built with minimal local consultation, all will have substantial negative impacts on local communities and environments, and all are expected to transmit electricity directly to China via the Yunnan power network.
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Also contentious is construction of parallel 690-mile oil and natural gas pipelines, plus associated berthing and storage facilities, from a deep-water port at Kyaukphyu near Sittwe in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State to Kunming in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province. The entire infrastructure is being built by China National Petroleum Corporation, which inaugurated pipeline construction on June 3, 2010. On an annual basis from mid-2013, the pipelines are expected to transport to China 22 million tons of oil shipped from the Middle East and Africa, and 12 billion cubic meters of natural gas pumped from Myanmar’s offshore Shwe field in the Bay of Bengal. They are therefore of great strategic importance to Beijing at a time of rising unease about energy security. The Myanmar government’s revenue stream is projected to be $1 billion annually for 30 years.
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However, there are also many other projects, large and small, public and private, legal and illegal. In the 2000s, Global Witness issued a series of reports on illicit Chinese logging in Kachin State.
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In 2008, EarthRights International published a survey of 69 Chinese corporations engaged in at least 90 hydropower, oil and natural gas, and mining projects.
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Much additional activity is undocumented. One significant result is that today Chinese investment is facing unwanted attention and criticism inside Myanmar. Furthermore, many parts of the country, from Mandalay in the heartland up to Kachin State in the north and across to Shan State in the east, are dominated by Chinese entrepreneurs and traders, and major towns and cities have a clear Chinese feel.
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In 2000, David Bachman noted that most states on its periphery were less dynamic economically, more disorganized socially, and less entrepreneurial than China. “Into these vacuums, Chinese traders have moved.”
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In a multitude of ways, expanding Chinese business networks are affecting Myanmar just as much as the rest of Asia.
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Despite this wealth of bilateral contact, China seeks to project an image of restrained engagement with Myanmar’s internal affairs, exhibiting behavior patterns that are as accommodating to local conditions as in other global contexts.
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In the non-state sector entrepreneurs take little or no interest in domestic politics.
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In the state sector things are different, though overt political engagement is still limited. On the whole, Beijing remains committed to strategies designed to nudge military leaders in a reformist direction without at any point endangering internal stability and thereby threatening core Chinese interests.
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The hope is that eventually a durable political settlement will be reached. In the meantime, Beijing is content to stay in the background as a mainly benevolent big brother providing protection for Myanmar in the UN Security Council and checking from a distance that potentially explosive issues like economic development, democratization and ethnic relations are handled quietly and effectively.
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For other Asian actors, Chinese support for the Myanmar junta throughout the late 1980s crisis had important ripple effects. In both Southeast Asia and South Asia, instinctive reactions were often hostile. Indeed, when protesters fled bloodshed in Rangoon and other major cities in September 1988, they found safe havens across Burma’s 900-mile frontier with India to the north and 1,100-mile border with Thailand to the east. New Delhi was notably receptive to members of the democracy movement, welcoming students to refugee camps, broadcasting support for their cause back into Burma, and adopting a policy of strict rejection of the junta.
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However, when the generals succeeded in seeing out the early storm and sustaining their rule into the 1990s, regional players became keen both to balance growing Chinese influence and to exploit any economic opportunities that might arise. In Southeast Asia, the shift was rapid. As early as the late 1980s, Thailand took a commercial interest that became especially strong when telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra was premier from 2001 to 2006.
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While tensions frequently flared along a border subject to sporadic fighting and occasional spillover, Thai business engagement has always been high. Other ASEAN states also acted quickly to build commercial links. In India, by contrast, the change did not come until 1993, when a Look East policy was unveiled to boost trade and diplomatic contacts across the region.
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New Delhi also looked to Yangon for help in managing problems with Naga militants and trafficking activities along the Myanmar border.

In a rather haphazard manner, a platform was thereby built for ASEAN in 1992 to adopt a formal policy of constructive engagement.
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Crafted mainly by the Thai foreign ministry, this sought to promote economic and political liberalization inside Myanmar and thereby serve regional business interests alongside the perceived needs of local people for development and reform. On July 23, 1997 ASEAN controversially admitted Myanmar to full membership, together with Laos.
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Key enabling roles were played by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Subsequently, there were changes of tone as exasperation with the junta prompted ASEAN to switch to flexible engagement at the time of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and to critical disengagement following the 2003 Depayin attack on Aung San Suu Kyi’s convoy.
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Throughout, extensive debate and perennially difficult relations exposed deep divisions about ways forward.
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Nevertheless, ASEAN has not significantly altered its policy stance.
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Even during the Nargis emergency, member states were reluctant to depart from the ASEAN Way of non-interference to insist on better access for aid agencies.
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Thereafter, however, they turned engagement to good effect by forming a Tripartite Core Group with the Myanmar government and the UN to spearhead reconstruction efforts.
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Pragmatic concerns ensured that Myanmar was also embraced by other groupings. In 1992 it joined the ADB’s Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Cooperation Program together with Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. In 1997 it was made part of what in 2004 became the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, now spanning Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. In 1999 it attended the Conference on Regional Cooperation and Development among China, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh, termed the Kunming Initiative. In 2000 it enlisted in Mekong-Ganga Cooperation, alongside Cambodia, India, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Today the country is therefore linked into many regional networks, notably through technical forums but also at political levels.

Looking farther afield, Japan was for many years in a category of its own. Bonds formed through warfare and occupation in the 1940s were often ambiguous, with key Burmese leaders including Aung San and Ne Win fighting both for and against the new imperial master. However, the extent of Japan’s military loss in Burma generated a firm foundation for postwar ties, fostered by veterans’ associations.
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In popular culture, Michio Takeyama’s hit 1946 novel
Harp of Burma
, turned into major films in 1956 and 1985, fueled romantic attachment to the disastrous campaign.
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Among specialists and officials,
Biru-kichi
(Burma crazy) enthusiasm for the country and its people triggered large reparations in a 1954 bilateral peace treaty and considerable development assistance thereafter.
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Indeed, by 1987 Japan accounted for 71.5 percent of all ODA to Burma, and for 20 percent of the national budget.
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On the Burmese side, reparations and aid flows, reinforced by the sheer brilliance of the economic miracle, stimulated interest.

In this context, the events of 1988 were a major challenge. Tokyo was already playing a key role in forcing some liberalization of the BSPP’s command economy by threatening to withdraw financial support.
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After the four eights uprising, though, “critical distance” became the mantra as Japan joined the US alliance in withholding recognition and suspending new aid.
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Nevertheless, diplomatic protocol surrounding Emperor Hirohito’s state funeral in February 1989 made the hiatus brief.
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In 1989, Tokyo sought re-engagement through diplomacy, debt relief and focused aid, and in 1995 it boosted contacts with the junta after Aung San Suu Kyi’s first release from house arrest. In the 2000s, it persisted with assistance programs and “quiet dialogue” designed to connect leading political figures.
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However, the rise of China as the pivotal external actor had a major impact. In 1993, Steinberg wrote that “Burma has relied on the Japanese, virtually since independence.”
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Today that assessment is no longer valid.

From the heart of international society, engagement has been pursued by a succession of envoys sent notably by the UN on dozens of largely fruitless missions.
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Over the years, two main patterns emerged. Since the early 1990s, four UN Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in Myanmar have been appointed. Yozo Yokota (1992–96) resigned because of scant support from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Rajsoomer Lallah (1996–2000) stepped down for similar reasons, never having been allowed to enter the country. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (2000–08) cut short a March 2003 visit after finding a hidden microphone taping conversations with activists in Insein Prison. Tomás Ojea Quintana (since May 2008) faced problems in visiting Myanmar, but did make three trips before informing the UN in March 2010 that the junta might be committing war crimes or crimes against humanity, and advising that it consider creating a commission of inquiry.
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In parallel, there have also been four Special Envoys of the UN Secretary-General. Alvaro de Soto (1997-99) made five visits. Razali Ismail (2000-06) made 12 trips, though he too was denied entry for the final 23 months of his term. Ibrahim Gambari (2006-09) visited eight times, mainly to address issues generated by suppression of the 2007 saffron uprising. Vijay Nambiar (since 2010) currently holds the portfolio.

Filling out the spectrum of engagement is action taken chiefly by UN agencies and INGOs. While most humanitarian organizations reacted to the events of the late 1980s by declining to operate inside the country, some aid workers soon began to focus on manifest human need and ask whether citizens should have to pay twice for the military clampdown. Triggered notably by a 1992 UN Children’s Fund analysis, leading agencies first discussed the merits of involvement and then in a small number of cases registered with the relevant line ministries to pilot in-country programs.
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In October 2006, a multi-donor Three Diseases Fund (known as the 3D Fund), currently worth $125 million, was launched to run for five years. Now governed by a consortium of Australia, Denmark, the EU, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK, it works through local and international implementing partners to tackle HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
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In December 2006, the ICG reported that “the INGO sector grew from 30 organisations in 2001 with a total budget of $15 million to 41 in 2004 with a budget of some $30 million, and more continue to arrive.”
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While it came nowhere near to matching 200 INGOs in Cambodia, with only one quarter of Myanmar’s population, it was no longer negligible.
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Since Nargis, further expansion has taken place, particularly in Yangon and the delta area. In October 2009, a multi-donor Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (known as LIFT), worth $100 million, was established to run for five years. Governed by a consortium of Australia, the EU, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, it too works through a range of implementing partners to help the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society.
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By 2011, 86 INGOs and 13 UN agencies were operating inside Myanmar.
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