China steps into Kachin
conflict By Brendan O'Reilly
The Chinese government is currently
hosting peace talks between Myanmar's government
and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). The KIA
expects China "will take a role as a witness and
mediate during the meeting". [1] These
negotiations are the latest in a series that have
been held in recent years by China. Fighting
between the KIA and Myanmar's military erupted in
2011 after a 17-year truce.
China is
increasingly involved in the conflict raging in
northern Myanmar's Kachin state. The many inherent
contradictions of Myanmar, also known as Burma, a
resource rich, impoverished, and politically
liberalizing land locked country in destabilizing
ethnic conflict, have vital implications for the
Chinese leadership.
Added to these
dynamics are Myanmar's strategic position on the
Asian landmass and the
recent overtures of Western powers to the
country's new leadership. China's deepening
unusual involvement in another country's internal
struggle is a sign of just how important Myanmar
is to China's foreign policy goals.
Fighting in Kachin State has intensified
in recent weeks as government forces have used
heavy weaponry and moved closer to KIA
strongholds. The KIA is the last of Myanmar's many
ethnic militias to face continued military action
from the central government. The other major rebel
groups - such as the Karen National Union and Shan
State Army - have hammered out ceasefire
agreements with the new government in recent
years.
That Myanmar is facing intense
ethnic fighting is unfortunately typical for the
country. Last year saw tens of thousands of
minority Muslim Rohingyas flee Myanmar after
widespread ethnic riots that pitted the Muslims
Rohingyas against Buddhist Rakhines. The recently
stalled conflict between the Karen National Union
and the central government began in 1949, and is
the world's longest-running separatist war.
What is unique about the current situation
is the active participation of China in attempting
to mitigate or resolve the conflict. For the past
several decades, China has usually taken a
decidedly hands-off approach to the domestic
politics and internal conflicts of her neighbors
and trading partners. The guiding principle of
"non-interference in other country's internal
affairs" has served China well in securing close
political and economic ties with a large variety
of nations.
Officially, the Chinese
government cares not if another country is a
theocratic monarchy or a capitalist democracy, so
long as trade continues to flow and China's core
interests are respected. Letting other nations to
sort out their own conflicts without ideological
interference has allowed Beijing to expand
influence throughout the world.
However,
China's active involvement in Myanmar may indicate
a significant policy shift. China has extensive
interests in the country, and cannot risk an
escalation of ethnic conflicts near China's
culturally heterogeneous border regions.
Furthermore, by investing political capital and
prestige in resolving the conflict, China is
giving a signal to other concerned global powers
that Myanmar remains well within its strategic
orbit.
China's interests Many of
China's motives in ending the fighting in northern
Myanmar are entirely obvious. Kachin State borders
southwestern China's Yunnan province. Already
thousands of refugees have crossed the border into
China. Furthermore, stray rockets and bombs
launched by Myanmar's army have landed in Chinese
territory. China is obviously highly motivated to
maintain internal stability in the ethnically
diverse southwest regions and avoid any violent
spillover.
As always, economic
considerations are an indispensable component of
China's Myanmar policy. Chinese corporations,
hungry for raw materials, dominate northern
Myanmar's markets for tropical hardwood and
minerals. Newly liberalizing Myanmar also
represents a potentially massive consumer market
for Chinese manufactured goods.
Strategic
objectives must also be factored into China's
increasingly proactive stance in Myanmar. After
decades of isolation, the government of Myanmar is
opening up to Western powers. The West has praised
Myanmar's domestic reforms - especially the
release of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize
recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. President Barack Obama
made a historic visit to Myanmar last year.
Myanmar's leaders are publicly flirting with the
United States at the same time that American
political and military assets are increasingly
focused on countering China's regional influence.
Of course these dynamics of China's
involvement in Myanmar - the political, the
economic, and the strategic - cannot be viewed as
entirely independent elements. Rather, there are
important parallels and influences linking these
trends. For example, local concerns about an
extensive copper mine - jointly owned by Myanmar's
military and a Chinese firm - have recently
erupted in emotional protests that met a violent
state response.
On the positive side for
China, Myanmar provides an excellent avenue for
expanding China's strategic depth. By June, an oil
pipeline is due to link Myanmar's Indian Ocean
coast with Kunming, the provincial capital of
China's Yunnan. This vital energy link will give
China much-desired regional maneuverability. At
present, nearly all of China's massive and growing
oil and energy imports must pass through the
strategic bottleneck of the Strait of Malacca and
the contested South China Sea.
China's
official Xinhua news outlet reports that the
pipeline through Myanmar will help satisfy
"China's new strategic energy channels" and avoid
the "risk-prone Strait of Malacca". In the
unlikely event of open hostilities in the region,
China's energy imports through Myanmar could be a
lifeline offering some degree of economic and
geopolitical operating space. Myanmar is an
increasingly central factor in the developing
Sino-American great power rivalry.
The
freedom to flee A very interestingly timed
report from the human rights NGO Freedom House has
served to highlight the curious political
posturing unfolding in Myanmar between China, the
United States, ethnic militias, and Myanmar's
central government. In an interview with Radio
Free Asia, Freedom House spokeswoman Sarah Cook
asserted that, in spite of long standing and
serious issues, "Burma has now surpassed China on
both political rights and civil liberties". [2]
It is rare - indeed, almost unprecedented
- for Freedom House (a self-described "independent
watchdog organization" that receives a majority of
its funding from the US government) to directly
compare the domestic political situation in two
different countries. This comparison may reflect
American political and strategic attitudes towards
the two countries.
A paradox of Freedom
House's praise for Myanmar's political changes is
that these not-insignificant reforms have
coincided with severe and intensifying ethnic
strife. In the past year, roughly 100,000 ethnic
Rohingya have fled their homes in western Myanmar
in the wake of severe ethnic strife that many
observers say amounted to state-sanctioned ethnic
cleansing.
According to Brad Adams of
Human Rights Watch, Myanmar's security forces not
only failed to effectively prevent the ethnic
fighting but also "unleashed a campaign of
violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya".
[3] Concurrent with the violent situation in
Myanmar's west is the intensified military
campaign and use of heavy weaponry against the KIA
in Myanmar's north.
While the domestic
political situation for majority ethnic Burmese
opposition groups has improved, it seems that the
only freedom left for restive minorities such as
the Rohingya and Kachin in Myanmar is the freedom
to die or flee the country. Tempered praise for
Myanmar's reforms from American politicians may
reveal more about Western strategic interests in
the country than any real improvement in the life
of Myanmar's people. There are also pertinent
lessons for an ethnically diverse China: communal
harmony does not always naturally follow political
liberalization.
In keeping with Chinese
foreign policy, Beijing doesn't officially care
one way or another about reform in Myanmar's
domestic politics - so long as trade continues to
flow, stability is ensured, and Myanmar does not
become another Western ally in the increasingly
open effort to contain China.
However, the
Chinese leadership cannot afford to ignore
developments in Myanmar. China's decision to
sponsor the talks between the KIA and Myanmar's
government might reveal a growing Chinese
discomfort with developments in their southern
neighbor.
As China's economic, political,
and strategic attachments deepen throughout the
world, the Chinese government may take a more
active role in resolving conflicts that are seen
as a threat to Chinese interests.
Talks
between the KIA and Myanmar's government may
provide China with important diplomatic experience
in securing the peace and promoting Chinese
foreign policy goals. As great power politics
resurface in Southeast Asia, expect more active
Chinese involvement in the region's disputes. In
the meanwhile, more Kachin refugees vote with
their feet and prefer Chinese stability to Burmese
freedom.
Brendan P O'Reilly is a
China-based writer and educator from Seattle. He
is author of The Transcendent Harmony.
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