By Pepe Escobar with permission and cross posted with Strategic Culture Foundation
It will be fascinating to watch how the (Dis)United States will deal with post-coup Myanmar as part of their 24/7 “containment of China” frenzy.
The (jade) elephant in the elaborate room housing the military coup in Myanmar had to be – what else – China. And the Tatmadaw – the Myanmar Armed Forces – knows it better than anyone.
There’s no smoking gun, of course, but it’s virtually impossible that Beijing had not been at least informed, or “consulted”, by the Tatmadaw on the new dispensation.
China, Myanmar’s top trade partner, is guided by three crucial strategic imperatives in the relationship with its southern neighbor: trade/connectivity via a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) corridor; full access to energy and minerals; and the necessity of cultivating a key ally within the 10-member ASEAN.
The BRI corridor between Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province, via Mandalay, to the port of Kyaukphyu in the Gulf of Bengal is the jewel in the New Silk Road crown, because it combines China’s strategic access to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Strait of Malacca, with secured energy flows via a combined oil and gas pipeline. This corridor clearly shows the centrality of Pipelineistan in the evolution of the New Silk Roads.
None of that will change, whoever runs the politico-economic show in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Aung San Suu Kyi, locally known as Amay Suu (“Mother Suu”) were discussing the China-Myanmar economic corridor only three weeks before the coup. Beijing and Naypyidaw have clinched no less than 33 economic deals only in 2020.
We just want “eternal peace”Something quite extraordinary happened earlier this week in Bangkok. A cross-section of the vast Myanmar diaspora in Thailand – which had been ballooning since the 1990s – met in front of the UN’s Asia-Pacific office.
They were asking for the international reaction to the coup to ignore the inevitable, incoming U.S. sanctions. Their argument: sanctions paralyze the work of citizen entrepreneurs, while keeping in place a patronage system that favors the Tatmadaw and deepens the influence of Beijing at the highest levels.
Yet this is not all about China. The Tatmadaw coup is an eminently domestic affair – which involved resorting to the same old school, CIA-style method that installed them as a harsh military dictatorship way back in 1962.
Elections this past November reconfirmed Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the NLD, in power by 83% of the votes. The pro-army party, the USDP, cried foul, blaming massive electoral fraud and insisting on a recount, which was refused by Parliament.
So the Tatmadaw invoked article 147 of the constitution, which authorizes a military takeover in case of a confirmed threat to sovereignty and national solidarity, or capable of “disintegrating the Union”.
The 2008 constitution was drawn by – who else – the Tatmadaw. They control the crucial Interior, Defense and Border ministries, as well as 25% of the seats in Parliament, which allows them veto power on any constitutional changes.
The military takeover involves the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. A year long state of emergency is in effect. New elections will happen when order and “eternal peace” will be restored.
The man in charge is Army chief Min Aung Hlaing, quite flush after years overseeing juicy deals conducted by Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. (MEHL). He also oversaw the hardcore response to the 2007 Saffron revolution – which did express legitimate grievances but was also largely co-opted as a by-the-book U.S. color revolution.
More worryingly, Min Aung Hlaing also deployed wasteland tactics against the Karen and Rohingya ethnic groups. He notoriously described the Rohingya operation as “the unfinished work of the Bengali problem”. Muslims in Myanmar are routinely debased by members of the Bamar ethnic majority as “Bengali”.
No raised ASEAN eyebrows
Life for the overwhelming majority of the Myanmar diaspora in Thailand can be very harsh. Roughly half dwell in the construction business, the textile industry and tourism. The other half does not hold a valid work permit – and lives in perpetual fear.
To complicate matters, late last year the de facto military government in Thailand went on a culpability overdrive, blaming them for crossing borders without undertaking quarantine and thus causing a second wave of Covid-19.
Thai unions, correctly, pointed to the real culprits: smuggling networks protected by the Thai military, which bypass the extremely complicated process of legalizing migrant workers while shielding employers who infringe labor laws.
In parallel, part of the – legalized – Myanmar diaspora is being enticed to join the so-called MilkTeaAlliance – which congregates Thais, Taiwanese and Hong Kongers, and lately Laotians and Filipinos as well – against, who else, China, and to a lesser extent, the Thai military government.
ASEAN won’t raise eyebrows against the Tatmadaw. ASEAN’s official policy remains non-interference in the domestic affairs of its 10 members. Bangkok – where, incidentally, the military junta took power in 2014 – has shown Olympic detachment.
In 2021, Myanmar happens to be coordinating nothing less than the China-ASEAN dialogue mechanism, as well as presiding over the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation – which discusses all crucial Mekong matters.
The mighty river, from the Tibetan plateau to the South China Sea, could not be more geo-economically strategic. China is severely criticized for the building of dozens of dams, which reduce direct water flows and cause serious imbalances to regional economies.
Myanmar is also coordinating a supremely sensitive geopolitical issue: the interminable negotiations to establish the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, which pit China against Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei and non-ASEAN Taiwan.
The Tatmadaw does not seem to be losing sleep over post-coup business problems. Erik Prince, former Blackwater honcho and now the head of Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group (FSG) – financed, among others, by powerful Chinese conglomerate Citic – is about to hit Naypyidaw to “securitize” local companies.
A juicier dossier involves what’s going to happen with the drug trade: arguably Tatmadaw getting a bigger piece of the pie. Cartels in Kachin state, in the north, export opium to China’s Yunnan province to the east, and India to the west. Shan state cartels are even more sophisticated: they export via Yunnan to Laos and Vietnam to the east, and also to India to the northwest.
And then there’s a gray area where no one really knows what’s going on: the weapons highway between China and India that runs through Kachin state – where we also find Lisu and Lahu ethnic groups.
The dizzying ethnic tapestry
The Myanmar electoral commission is a very tricky business, to say the least. They are designated by the Executive, and had to face a lot of criticism – internal, not international – for their censorship of opposition parties in the November elections.
The end result privileged the NLD, whose support is negligible in all border regions. Myanmar’s majority ethnic group – and the NLD’s electoral base – is the Bamar, Buddhist and concentrated in the central part of the country.
The NLD frankly does not care about the 135 ethnic minorities – which represent at least one third of the general population. It’s been a long way down since Suu Kyi came to power, when the NLD actually enjoyed a lot of support. Suu Kyi’s international high profile is essentially due to the power of the Clinton machine.
If you talk to a Mon or a Karen, he or she will tell you they had to learn the hard way how much of an intolerant autocrat is the real Suu Kyi. She promised there would be peace in the border regions – eternally mired in a fight between the Tatmadaw and autonomous movements. She could not possibly deliver because she had no power whatsoever over the military.
Without any consultation, the electoral commission decided to cancel voting, totally or partially, in 56 cantons of Arakan state, Shan state, Karen state, Mon state and Kachin state, all of them ethnic minorities. Nearly 1.5 million people were deprived of voting.
There were no elections, for instance, in the majority of Arakan state; the electoral commission invoked “security reasons”. The reality is the Tatmadaw is in a bitter fight against the Arakan Army, which want self-determination.
Needless to add, the Rohingyas – which live in Arakan – were not allowed to vote. Nearly 600,000 of them still barely survive in camps and closed villages in Arakan.
In the 1990s, I visited Shan state, which borders China’s strategic Yunnan province to the east. Nothing much changed over two decades: the guerrilla has to fight the Tatmadaw because they clearly see how the army and their business cronies are obsessed to capture the region’s lavish natural resources.
I traveled extensively in Myanmar in the second part of the 1990s – before being blacklisted by the military junta, like virtually every journalist and analyst working in Southeast Asia. Ten years ago, photojournalist Jason Florio, with whom I’ve been everywhere from Afghanistan to Cambodia, managed to be sneaked into Karen rebel territory, where he shot some outstanding pictures.
In Kachin state, rival parties in the 2015 elections this time tried to pool their efforts. But in the end they were badly bruised: the electoral mechanism – one round only – favored the winning party, Suu Kyi’s NLD.
Beijing does not interfere in the dizzyingly complex Myanmar ethnic maze. But questions remain over the murky support for Chinese who live in Kachin state in northern Myanmar: it’s possible they may be used as leverage in negotiations with the Tatmadaw.
The basic fact is the guerrillas won’t go away. The top two are the Kachin Independence Army and the United Wa State Army (Shan). But then there’s the Arakan Liberation Army, the China National Army, the Karenni Army (Kayah), the Karen National Defense Organization and the Karen National Liberation, and the Mon National Liberation Army.
What this weaponized tapestry boils down to, in the long run, is a tremendously (Dis)United Myanmar, bolstering the Tatmadaw’s claim that no other mechanism is capable of guaranteeing unity. It doesn’t hurt that “unity” comes with the extra perks of controlling crucial sectors such as minerals, finance and telecom.
It will be fascinating to watch how the (Dis)United Imperial States will deal with post-coup Myanmar as part of their 24/7 “containment of China” frenzy. The Tatmadaw are not exactly trembling in their boots.
Excellent.. Yes, I totally agree with your most apt title..
Burmese Days ….(published 1934)..
and perhaps “A Hanging” (published 1931) and “Shooting an Elephant” (published 1936), would be suitable chapter headings to decribe the past and present military Junta of Myanmar.!!
In fact, these titles are from George Orwell, or Eric Arthur Blair coming from “lower-upper-middle class” stock!!!
Ironically, his father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. Yet again the Drugs Trade with their Rat Lines, as thoroughy discussed in a previous posting regarding Her/His Majesty´s most intimate and prolonged interest in the Chinese Triads of Shanghai and HongKong.
Perhaps Orwell´s dad was also a faithful client of the HSBC Bank..(Heroin Shipments to a British colony!!).
How convenient for the OSS/CIA, in the late 1940´s, with full backing from the (dis)Honourable Her Majesty´s most industrious Intelligence agencies, Bankers and the Colonial Office to have the KMT-Kuomintang (Cash my Check!!) disgruntled renegades establish the Golden Triangle Opium producing cartel overlapping Thailand & Laos & Burma/Myanmar..
Excuse my bitter appraisal but it´s kinda personal.. in 1980 on a 4 day Trekking Trip in the Golden Triangle I greedily smoked 2 opium pipes too many!! I spent the next day throwing up/vomiting along the trail.
However, the Akah, Lao!! and Karen tribes people/refugees were very kind, hospitable and noble.
Back to early 2021 with yet again the ´magic´ RNA vaxxxx´from PISSED – sorry, PFIZER drug being forcily jabbed/injected on us plebs by Willy-Nilly Gates and Faux Faucci and their slobbering entourage!!
What would be most appropriate for these two individuals..
The Nobel Prize for Mediocre Medicine or the Noble Prize for a Piece of Peace!!
Bon weekend tout le monde..
I cannot comment informed about Burma but Pepe’s outline helps describe the complex Myanmar ethnic maze. Certainly this is the overall strategic issue and will connect up with the deep sea port in Sri Lanka they obtained in return for military asset support for the Sinhalese side in the 25 year civil war with the Tamil Tigers.
A good read on the latter is “Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka” by John Gimlette (2015). Five-eyes must be crying ten rivers of tears that their whole Singapore gateway stranglehold strategy is looking like last week’s fish’n chips. No wonder big Boris Johnson of little (dis)UK (or is it a ‘cut off your Johnson’ from the Big Lebowski?) is trying to pogo-stick his way out to the far-east colonies again:
“The BRI corridor between Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province, via Mandalay, to the port of Kyaukphyu in the Gulf of Bengal is the jewel in the New Silk Road crown, because it combines China’s strategic access to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Strait of Malacca, with secured energy flows via a combined oil and gas pipeline. This corridor clearly shows the centrality of Pipelineistan in the evolution of the New Silk Roads.”
covid-19 comment removed … allowed only in ‘cafe’ moderation rule 19 .. mod
A very informative piece about Myanmar. I would comment on two points:
1) The elephants (including the ethnic groups) are grappling for the ‘big’ easy money. This is rife everywhere in SE Asia and only brought to manageable levels in China under President Xi. The Myanmar diaspora is spot on. The economic development of Myanmar should continue and advance a sector where the hard (and honest) money is earned. But this depends on peace and improving infrastructure. The ‘elephants’ can keep the jade mines and other big and easy money. This is no problem in Myanmar where virtually nobody actually dies of hunger, such is the fertility of the very well-watered land. The masses can work their way up. But they need peace and infrastructure.
2) The Chinese in Kachin State: At present, they are as shrewd as any in sinic-hostile SE Asia. They will not allow themselves to be used as political pawns in any way. Not even by China. And they are there for the hard-earned money, not for the politics. Their source of wealth? Trading with the big market next-door – China. It’s a no-brainer not being involved in politics instead of navigating the local and the geopolitics.
As for the US, the coup in Myanmar will also expose its impotence. It is in no position to do much besides imposing (increasingly ineffective) sanctions. Its 3 other dogs in the Quad may bark and show some (self) righteousness. But that’s about all.
And China would need to be pragmatic about upping its influence in Myanmar in the aftermaths of the coup. Too much influence and/or ‘winning’ too much will risk a back-lash as had happened during the Thein Sein administration when the Myitsone Dam was suspended.
China will therefore be versatile in its influence – exercising just enough to achieve its objectives and avoid the stifling embrace that was characteristic of the US and China’s own influence before 2010.
I live less than a couple hundred kilometres from the Myanmar border, and among my acquaintances is a former United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) rebel who was trained in a camp in Myanmar. I have myself lived under an insurgency, seen “tracers light up the sky”, and I can tell you this:
In 1989 the then Congress Party regime in India bent over backwards to support the Aung San Suu Kyi gang. Aung San – Aung San Suu Kyi’s father – was a double turncoat during WWII, first siding (as the head of the Burma National Army) with the Japanese against the Brutish colonisers. So did the Indian National Army’s Subhas Chandra Bose. But unlike Bose, Aung San changed sides again as soon as he saw the Japanese were going to lose, and joined with the Brutish colonial enslavers in their 1945 offensive into Myanmar. So it’s not as though Suu Kyi exactly has a stellar genetic heritage; she’s the daughter of a Quisling, and, moreover, was married to a foreigner, which under the then constitution of Myanmar disqualified her from seeking election anyway.
But this didn’t matter at all to the then Congress regime of Rajiv Gandhi in India, which had just lost a war in Sri Lanka, had totally lost domestic support over an arms procurement scandal (the Bofors scam), and as frantically trying to butter up the Imperialist States of Amerikastan as the USSR imploded. When Suu Kyi’s terrorists hijacked a Myanmarese passenger plane to Calcutta, the regime even gave the hijackers political asylum in India. And of course this removed all incentive for the Myanmar junta (then called the State Law and Order Restoration Commission, SLORC) to prevent Indian terrorists, like the aforementioned ULFA, from setting up bases in Myanmar. Only many, many years later – after the North East of India had been ravaged by rebels based in Myanmar – did Indian regimes grudgingly give up on Suu Kyi and improve relations with the junta. In return, the terrorist bases were largely wiped out and today militancy in North Eastern India is at a historic low.
The so called “rebels” in Myanmar – the narcoterrorist Kachin Independence Army (KIA) especially – had also been armed and trained by the Indian army through the 1990s, which of course drastically increased drug abuse in Indian states in which they were hosted, especially Manipur, so that was finally another incentive in persuading India to give up on Suu Kyi. As far as I know Indian support to the KIA has wholly ceased over the last few years.
After the Suu Kyi woman was released from house arrest in 2011, of course, successive Indian regimes (first that of the blue turbaned Bush-hugging unelected “prime minister” Manmohan Singh and then of Narendrabhai Damodardasbhai Modi) imagined that they could have their cake and eat it too, but supporting both the junta and Suu Kyi. This particular fantasy was already under severe stress after the Rohingya genocide, when large numbers of Rohingya fled to India and the Modi regime couldn’t get the courts to throw them out. And the Chinese links with Myanmar put the Modi regime in an even greater quandary with the coup; the gibbering globetrotting genocidal gangster Gujarati government of Narendrabhai Damodardasbhai Modi looks at everything as a zero sum game, which means it thinks that if China helps Myanmar develop, India somehow loses. And that’s why the Modi regime has kept its mouth tight shut over the coup.
All of which doesn’t, of course, mean that the racist fascist Buddhist genocidaire Myanmarese military is any better than the racist fascist Buddhist genocidaire Aung San Suu Kyi. It’s an internal struggle between evil and evil. That one side is backed by China and by default India, and the other by Amerikastan and its slaves, makes no difference to that.
“Nearly 600,000 of them still barely survive in camps and closed villages…”
Before “camps” we had widespread “ghettoes,” “pales,” or other pieces of real estate dedicated to confining “deplorables” in practically every society you can think of. Then, of course, there are good old fashioned genuine prisons, sometimes trivialized as “detention centers,” which exceptionalist America seems to prefer. Not that a huge chunk of our “free” full-fledged citizens don’t suffer significant daily depravations and repression too.
Sheesh! What percentage of the human race is told every day they don’t belong on this planet? Why do humans bother to keep having babies which will end up serving privilege if they are “lucky?”
as part of their 24/7 “containment of China” frenzy.
Lol – Almost everything in the store here is made in China. Even the paper painter’s masks which are all the fashion now. The box says they are useless against viruses, which is, I think, correct. The same box says “Made in China”.
From Foreign Affairs magazine in 1997 by Zbigniew. Oops. I think he underestimated China, Confucian values and the soft power of a moral geostrategy vs neo narcissistic immoral geostrategy.
“Although China is emerging as a regionally dominant power, it is not likely to become a global one for a long time. The conventional wisdom that China will be the next global power is breeding paranoia outside China while fostering megalomania in China. It is far from certain that China’s explosive growth rates can be, maintained for the next two decades. In fact, continued long-term growth at the current rates would require an unusually felicitous mix of national leadership, political tranquillity, social discipline, high savings, massive inflows of foreign investment, and regional stability. A prolonged combination of all of these factors is unlikely.
Even if China avoids serious political disruptions and sustains its economic growth for a quarter of a century — both rather big ifs — China would still be a relatively poor country. A tripling0f GDP would leave China below most nations in per capita income, and a significant portion of its people would remain poor. Its standing in access to telephones, cars, computers, let alone consumer goods, would be very low.”
http://comw.org/pda/fulltext/9709brzezinski.html
A tripling of China’s GDP will raise its per capita income USD45,000 based on PPP. And after including inflation, the per capita income will likely be USD70,000.
And when will China achieve this? My calculation indicates by 2030 at the latest if not earlier by 2028. By that date, China’s per capita income will likely eclipse (if the US economy collapse) the US by far or match the US if the US cooperate economically with China.
In 2005, I calculated that China will be bigger economically in size than the US by 2024 and I told that to an incredulous Chinese friend of mine. Off course I did not factor in the global financial crisis of 2008-9. China in fact achieved this by 2014 according to the IMF and the World Bank.
And China has no wish to ‘dominate’ anyone, much less the world. China just wants to develop peacefully. Its foreign policy is geared towards ensuring a favourable global environment in order to achieve and sustain this.
Simon, China is still not a global full spectrum power, they’re nowhere close to achieving that this is reflected in their reaction to this coup in Myanmar (explained at the end of this comment). Li Keqing admited publically that 600 million Chinese live in abject poverty: having to juggle between food, shelter or substandard medical care. China is in trouble, that’s just a fact, chairman Xi doesn’t want chinese citizens to be upper middle class or above, he wants them to be middle income, nor high income (there is some logic to this, just look at societies that become high income, they become weak, in his mind). China’s stats are inflated and intelligent officials high up in the CCP disbelieve them, particularly those stats from the provinces. China is not a global power, they are trapped in the first island chain, BRI is suspended, they just lost face in confronting India in Ladakh/Xinjiang boundary, with the PLA withdrawing on Indian terms (read the TASS article published in the last few days) , supply chain diversification away from China is well on its way. And unlike the speculation of pepe Escobar, it looks like china was caught off guard about the coup in Myanmar. And the Burmese military was right, the election was being Stolen. Also Aung San Suu Kyi was closer to China than the military, she supported BRI projects that the military stopped on security grounds. The conflicting initial statements coming from the Chinese foreign ministry clearly showed confusion at the developments. The other point is that the Indians seem to be pleased with this coup (why? the answer would be interesting). Things are going to be very rough for CCP China going forward, they wanted a bipolar world ruled by them (absurd hubris) and the United States, but instead the world is firmly on course for a multipolar arrangement.
Where did you get this feed from? Sounds like a very wet dream of the Quad.
China never wanted to be a “full-spectrum global power” like the USA, the USSR, and very likely India. China just wants to be China, and able to defend itself, unlike during the Opium Wars. That’s all.
Anyway, for the 600 million Chinese, that is going to change and change very fast. Absolute poverty is now eradicated in China. China is going to lower the Gini-coefficient to below 30 with its new dual-circulation policy that privileges consumption.
China had also reined in the tycoons, oligarchs-wannabes, beginning with the real-estate and finance tycoons and now the high-tech tycoons. They are being made to know their place and not accumulate wealth and power like in the USA.
The new economy in China will not be totally profit-orientated lie in the USA but had already becoming mass-innovation orientated, with social and individual satisfaction coming from individual self-expression from innovation and successful entrepreneurship rather than from just profit.
There is a renewed vitality in the Chinese economy, post covid-19, that is not seen elsewhere.
As for the TASS report of 45 Chinese dead in the Galwan valley clash, my hunch is that TASS is helping to make it easier for the Indian government to disengage and stand down its troops at the border with China.
45 Chinese dead is more than 100% more than the official Indian dead of 20 in the fistfight. So India scored a victory of sorts and could disengage (and cut the sufferings of its troops in the cold high altitude Himalayas without shame. That what is happening now.
But the battalion commanded by the late Colonel Babu was ‘indisposed’ after the clash. And the question was asked in the Indian Lok Sabha (parliament) whether India suffered 250 dead in the clash? During the clash, the entire battalion was pushed off the slopes of the Galvan valley. Many fled, many fell into the Galvan river and died of exposure in the icy cold waters, having been left behind by their fleeing fellow soldiers. Many were also captured and returned to India in good condition.
I remember some shady photo, way back in ’98, was it a videoclip of the U2, where the frontman asked for support of the movement freeing Aung San Suu Kyi.
To most naive Westerners, Aung San Suu Kyi occupies the “mystical Oriental leader” archetype a la Tenzin Gyatso and Mohandas K. Gandhi.
In fact I attended one of those U2 performances in my youth wherein they showed a speech from Suu Kyi between songs…
I think Pepe made a mistake. There is no such “China National Army” in Myanmar. He must be referring to the MNDAA – Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army of the Kokang region in Shan State. The people there are ethnic Chinese but lived in the Shan State of Myanmar since the Ming Dynasty.