Page 2 of
2 China no sure bet on
Myanmar By Bertil Lintner
Chinese completely cut off the CPB,
which still controlled most of the border areas
inside Myanmar. Chinese support continued, albeit
on a much reduced scale - until the hill tribe
rank-and-file of the CPB's army rose in mutiny in
1989 and drove the entire Maoist Burman leadership
into exile in China. The CPB subsequently split up
into four different regional armies based along
ethnic lines.
Battlefields and
marketplaces Before long, however, all of
them entered into ceasefire
agreements with the Myanmar
government, which also made cross-border trade
possible for the first time in decades. It was
also clear that China coveted Myanmar's forests as
well as rich deposits of minerals and natural gas.
China became the first major country to show
interest in Myanmar's riches, and the Chinese,
renowned for their ability to plan far ahead, had
actually expressed their intentions, almost
unnoticed, in an article in the official Beijing
Review as early as September 2, 1985.
Entitled "Opening to the Southwest: An
Expert Opinion", the article, which was written by
the former vice minister of communications, Pan
Qi, outlined the possibilities of finding an
outlet for trade from China's landlocked southern
provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, through Myanmar,
to the Indian Ocean. It also mentioned the Myanmar
railheads of Myitkyina and Lashio in the
northeast, and the Irrawaddy River, as possible
conduits for the export of Chinese goods.
At that time, those trade links were a
remote dream, but the CPB mutiny four years later
ushered in a new, more cordial era in
China-Myanmar relations. First China supplied
cash-strapped Myanmar with all kinds of military
hardware at generous prices, including fighter,
ground attack and transport aircraft, tanks and
armored personnel carriers, naval vessels, a
variety of towed and self-propelled artillery
pieces, surface-to-air missiles, trucks and
infantry equipment.
By late 1991, Chinese
experts were also assisting in a series of
infrastructure projects to spruce up Myanmar's
poorly maintained roads and railways. Chinese
military advisers also arrived in the same year,
the first foreign military personnel to be
stationed in Myanmar since the Australians had a
contingent there to train the Myanmar army in the
1950s. And soon thereafter cross-border trade
between China and Myanmar started to boom.
More recently, China has provided Myanmar
with low interest loans to help stabilize its weak
currency, the kyat, and Chinese investment in the
sanctions-hit economy is substantial. That's
particularly true of the energy sector, including
a recent agreement to help build a gas pipeline
from the Bay of Bengal which in future will be
supplemented with an oil pipeline designed to
allow Chinese ships carrying Middle Eastern oil to
skirt the congested Malacca Strait. China has also
helped Myanmar upgrade its naval bases on the
mainland as well as on Coco Island, where in
return it is believed to receive crucial
intelligence information on areas where its vital
oil supplies pass.
To preserve and develop
these budding relations, China wants stability in
Myanmar's political status quo, not regime change.
In January, China - along with Russia - used its
veto power to block a US and British-sponsored
resolution at the UN's Security Council, although
a majority of its members had voted in favor. When
the Security Council on October 11 issued a
non-binding statement "deploring" Myanmar's
crushing of the recent pro-democracy
demonstrations and called for political dialogue,
China ensured that the stronger, original version
of the statement was toned down.
China's
deputy UN ambassador, Liu Zhenmin, limited his
comments to hoping the statement would help a
visit to the country by UN special envoy Gambari,
adding that it was up to Myanmar's government and
people "to resolve this issue". Evidently China
does not want to alienate the generals in
Naypyitaw. On the other hand, the generals now
more than ever need Chinese support to fend off
international criticism. Notably, Myanmar's rulers
found it necessary to send Foreign Minister Nyan
Win to China at the height of the anti-government
demonstrations in Yangon in September.
According to the Chiang Mai-based Myanmar
exile publication Irrawaddy, during his
unpublicized visit Nyan Win met Chinese state
councilor Tang Jiaxuan in Zhongnanhai, the
headquarters of the Chinese government, to brief
him on the situation.There have since been no
known high-level contacts between Chinese and
Myanmar leaders.
But Asia Times Online has
learnt that a colonel attached to the Chinese
Embassy in Yangon, a known specialist in
psychological warfare and counter-subversion,
regularly meets with high-ranking members of the
junta. The Chinese official's role in Myanmar is
not entirely clear, but his presence suggests a
closer relationship between the two countries than
some skeptics assume.
On the other hand,
the Chinese also maintain close relations with
several former rebel groups that now have made
peace with the government but have still retained
their arms and different degrees of autonomy over
their respective areas. The Kachin Independence
Army in the far north of the country as well as
the various components of the CPB's former army,
especially the United Wa State Army (UWSA) deal
directly with the authorities on the other side of
the frontier and have even been able to purchase
arms and ammunition from China.
The UWSA
today is much stronger and better equipped than
the CPB was during the last years before the
mutiny. This has not been lost on the generals in
Naypyitaw, nor have they forgotten that they once
fought against the Chinese-supported CPB.
Junta chief General Than Shwe spent time
with the 88th Light Infantry Division in Kengtung
in the northeast, close to the CPB front, and his
deputy, General Maung Aye, served as eastern
commander in the 1980s, also with the CPB as his
main enemy. Maung Aye is especially reputed to be
suspicious of China's designs for Myanmar and if
he were to any time soon take power from the
ailing Than Shwe bilateral relations could suffer.
Bertil Lintner is a former
correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific
Media Services.
(Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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