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CHINA MOVES ON MYANMAR
Part 1: PLA masses on the
border
By Xu Er
HONG KONG -
On September 16, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong
Quan told a press conference that China had early that
month changed its guard on the border with Myanmar in
Yunnan province, with People's Liberation Army (PLA)
soldiers taking over the border defense responsibilities
from local armed police. He said the move was a normal
adjustment and had been completed, adding that many
journalists had asked him about the issue the day
before.
In fact, Kong's statement came out of
the blue - nobody was asking any questions about the
China-Myanmar border. The focus of the press conference
was China's military buildup on its North Korean border.
However, the Beijing government was evidently eager to
let the world know that it was massing its forces on the
Myanmar border as well, hence Kong's seemingly
irrelevant statement.
For despite China's
preference for a low profile, it likes to keep the
outside world posted on what's happening on its borders.
Intrigued by Kong's remarks, Asia Times Online
sent a team to the southern province of Yunnan, and into
Myanmar itself, to investigate the nature and scale of
the border "adjustment", and to try to determine why it
is taking place. Had a US military force been secretly
deployed inside Myanmar, as one rumor had it? Or, more
likely, was Beijing worried that the embattled military
dictatorship in Yangon was losing control of the country
all on its own, without interference by Americans in the
shadows?
ATol found that Kong did not tell the
whole truth by describing the deployment as a routine
adjustment. The deployment is large, and existing border
patrols have not been replaced, but have been reinforced
by well-equipped units of the People's Liberation Army
(PLA).
A restaurant owner in a night market near
the southern border witnessed the "military adjustment"
one night in early September. He said the fleet of army
trucks from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, and
other places could have numbered in the hundreds, to say
nothing of other vehicles. It took about 10 minutes for
these trucks to pass by his door. They were heading
toward Yunnan's border with Myanmar within the
province's Xishuangbanna autonomous prefecture.
As with the situation on the Sino-North Korean
border at the end of September, the changes on the
China-Myanmar border were clearly reinforcements, not
replacements. The existing border police were not
removed; in fact, to make things more complicated and
mysterious, some of them were transformed into a
"mobility brigade". For local residents, this is one of
the signs of prewar preparations.
The military
buildup is most conspicuous in Jinghong, the capital of
Xishuangbanna autonomous prefecture. Originally, there
was one military branch zone and an armed-police branch
stationed in the prefecture. The former was north of
Jinghong, while the latter was on Jingdexi Road beside
Jinghong Produce Market. Both of them were of division
level. Military units 7702 and 7701, both under the
branch zone of Xishuangbanna, have been stationed in
Menghai and Mengla counties as well as Jinghong for a
long time.
At the same time, armed police of a
regiment size have also been quartered respectively in
places mentioned above. In Daluo town of Menghai, which
is on the border, there is one checkpoint with 26 police
officers. Though small in size, its head, surnamed Zhu,
is nonetheless a lieutenant-colonel, equivalent to a
battalion commander in the military. A large number of
armed police have been removed from the border because
of the "adjustment", but some 100 police officers
(equivalent to a company in size) are still kept in this
tiny town.
The armed police that were stationed
in Menghai and Mengla previously, one regiment in size
each, seem to have been withdrawn. Yet a new mobility
brigade with more than 300 officers has been set up
along with existing forces: a squadron of armed police
guarding the prison and a border brigade.
According to informed sources, the evacuated
armed police were not sent far, but were redeployed in
the deep forests closer to the border for tighter
defense, forming a garrison model of armed police in the
first frontline and PLA troops in the second.
On
September 9, the newly arrived troops took over the
barracks and the battalion headquarters from border
police. Villages that were never garrisoned before were
now for the first time fortified. According to informed
sources, the reinforcements were PLA 13th Army field
troops who were beyond the command of the Xishuangbanna
Autonomous Prefecture Military Branch Zone.
The
13th Army is nicknamed the Chuan Army (ie Army from
Sichuan province) in the locality, for it has apparently
never been back to Yunnan since 1968, when the province
came under the Chengdu Military Zone. Since that time,
the field army stationed in Yunnan has been the 14th
Army. But now, the Chuan Army has broken the convention
and marched into the "taboo" region, a possible
indication of Beijing's desire to reinforce the border.
The 13th Army is ranked as a Level A field army,
equipped with sophisticated armored weaponry, while the
14th is an inferior Level B, largely consisting of
infantry.
The 13th Army has fielded troops in
numerous towns and villages in the area. Radar and
missile forces have been deployed in a deep valley near
Mengzhi village, which has been demarcated as a
forbidden zone.
At the time of Asia Times
Online's investigation in the area, rumors were rife
that US paratroops had infiltrated northern Myanmar to
establish an air force base there. ATol confirmed that
the rumor originated from the PLA barracks and soon
spread among the local residents. Informed sources in
Washington and Bangkok told ATol that the rumors were
totally groundless. Some Bangkok sources insisted that
the Thai government would not tolerate any such
unilateral US action in neighboring Myanmar.
Other sources in Beijing told ATol that China's
reinforcement is a result of its fear that the military
government in Yangon might collapse because of domestic
and international pressure. As Myanmar pro-democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been put under house arrest
for the third time, opposition voices are mounting.
Internationally, the clamor against the junta has been
mounting, even within the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, which is always reluctant to interfere in the
internal affairs of a member state.
Under these
circumstances, even if the military government of
Myanmar can hold on to its rule, its ability to control
the border could deteriorate dramatically, leading to
fighting among warlords in the region. For that and
other reasons, China has seen the need to strengthen its
own defense of the border.
Next: Casino town loses out
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