WHILE MYANMAR remains shunned by the West, the country's two
giant neighbours, India and China, are jockeying for influence in
Yangon. Since the beginning of the year, India's army chief General
Ved Prakash Malik has made two trips to Myanmar and his Burmese
counterpart General Maung Aye has visited both India and China.
These top-level exchanges have highlighted Myanmar's importance in
the strategic competition between Beijing and New Delhi.
China enjoys a considerable head start in the race to woo
Yangon's military leaders. Since 1988, Myanmar has become China's
closest ally in South-east Asia, a major recipient of Chinese
military hardware and a potential springboard for projecting
Chinese military power in the region. During Maung Aye's trip to
Beijing in June to mark 50 years of diplomatic ties, his host,
Chinese Vice-President Hu Jintao, noted that strengthening
Sino-Myanmarese relations was 'an important part of China's
diplomacy concerning its surrounding areas'.
The (china-Myanmar) alliance has
alarmed India, which in recent years has shifted its strategy away
from supporting Myanmar's opposition movement towards cementing
ties with the junta. New Delhi has offered Myanmar
favourable trade relations and cooperation against ethnic
insurgents along the Indo-Myanmarese frontier. India also appears
to be exploiting a rift between Maung Aye and the head of Myanmar's
powerful military intelligence service, Lieutenant-General Khin
Nyunt, viewed as far more pro-Chinese than the army chief. New
Delhi has engaged in a charm offensive to encourage Maung Aye to
take a more independent foreign-policy stance.
Intelligence analysts say that China's economic political and
military influence in the country has already become so strong that
it would be hard for Yangon radically to reorient its foreign
policy But the demise of Myanmar's elder generation of military
leaders could present opportunities for India to woo Myanmar away
from China.
Myanmar emerged as a key Chinese ally on 6 August 1988, when the
two countries signed an agreement establishing official trade
across the common border hitherto - isolated Myanmar's first such
agreement with a neighbour. Significantly, the signing took place
while Myanmar was in turmoil. Two days later, millions of people
across the country took to the streets to demand an end to army
rule and a restoration of the democracy the country enjoyed prior
to the first military coup in 1962.
China was eager to find a trading outlet to the Indian
Ocean for its landlocked inland provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan,
via Myanmar. The Myanmarese rail-heads of Myitkyina and
Lashio in north-eastern Myanmar, as well as the Irrawaddy River,
were potential conduits. But the relevant border areas were at the
time controlled by the insurgent Communist Party of Burma (CPB),
which China had previously supported.
The CPB's grip weakened in 1989, when the party's hilltribe rank
and file mutinied against the ageing, Maoist and mainly Myanmarese
party leadership. Subsequently, the CPB split along ethnic lines
into four regional armies all of which then signed cease-fire
agreements with the government. By 1990, trade between the two
countries was flourishing and Myanmar had become China's principal
political and military ally in South-east Asia. China poured arms
into Myanmar to shore up the military government.
The isolation and condemnation experienced by both countries in
the wake of the Yangon massacre of 1988 and the violent suppression
of the Tiananmen Square protests the following year helped to draw
them closer together. But China's calculations were also strategic.
Close to the key shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean and
South-east Asia, Myanmar could help China to extend its military
reach into a region of vital importance to Asian economies The bulk
of Japan's Middle East oil imports, for example, pass through the
area. China also wanted to check India's growing strategic
influence.
By late 1991, Chinese experts were helping to upgrade Myanmar's
infrastructure, including its badly maintained roads and railways.
Chinese military advisers also arrived that year, the first foreign
military personnel to be stationed in Myanmar since the 1950s.
Myanmar was becoming a de facto Chinese client state. Ironically,
shrewd diplomacy and flourishing bilateral trade had accomplished
for China what the insurgent CPB had failed to achieve.
One of China's motives for arming Myanmar was to help
safeguard the new trade routes through its potentially volatile
neighbour. Intelligence sources estimate the total value
of Chinese arms deliveries to Myanmar in the 1990s at $1.2 billion,
with most of them acquired at a discount or through barter deals or
interest-free loans. Military hardware delivered by China
included:
In the past year, China has also delivered 12 Karakoram-8
trainers and 1 ground-attack aircraft, which are produced in a
joint venture with Pakistan. The latest batch arrived in
January.
India has been particularly concerned by Chinese support
for the upgrading of Myanmar's naval facilities. These
include at least four electronic listening posts along the Bay of
Bengal and in the Andaman Sea: Man-aung, Hainggyi, Zadetkyi island
and the strategically important Coco Islands just north of India's
Andaman Islands. Chinese technicians have been spotted at the naval
bases at Monkey Point, near Yangon, and Kyaikkami, south of the
port city of Moulmein. There is also a Chinese-built radar station
on Saganthit island near Mergui in south-eastern Myanmar.
Although China's presence in the Bay of Bengal is currently
limited to instructors and technicians, the new radar equipment is
Chinese-made and probably operated, at least in part, by Chinese
technicians, enabling Beijing's intelligence agencies to monitor
this sensitive maritime region.
China and Myanmar have pledged to share intelligence of
potential use to both countries.
In May 1998, the outspoken Indian defence minister,
George Fernandes, caused uproar by accusing Beijing of helping
Myanmar to install surveillance and communications equipment on the
Coco Islands. Myanmar and China denied the accusations,
but New Delhi's concerns were well founded. In August 1993, Indian
coastguards caught three boats 'fishing' close to the Andamans,
where last year the Indian navy established a new Far Eastern Naval
Command in a move viewed as an attempt to counter Chinese influence
in Myanmar. The trawlers were flying Myamarese flags, but
the crew of 55 was Chinese. There was no fishing equipment
on board - only radio-communication and depth-sounding equipment.
The Chinese embassy in New Delhi intervened and the crew was
released. At the time, the incident was discreetly buried in the
Defence Ministry's files in New Delhi. But when China's designs
became obvious, the more hawkish government that came to
power in India in 1996 began to pay closer attention to
developments in Sino-Myanmarese relations.
At first, India had tried to counter China's influence in
Myanmar by supporting the country's pro-democracy forces. But
around 1993, India began to re-evaluate this strategy,
concerned that it had only served to push Yangon closer to
Beijing. According to a senior Indian official, Myanmarese
generals signalled to New Delhi that it should take a greater
interest in development work to reduce Yangon's heavy dependence on
China.
During his two-day visit to Myanmar in January this year, Malik
discussed plans for curbing insurgent groups based in Myanmar that
have been active in northeastern India. Maung Aye then went to the
north-eastern Indian town of Shillong - an unusual visit by a
foreign leader to a provincial capital - where he held talks with
senior officials from the Indian trade, energy, defence, home and
foreign-affairs ministries. After this exchange, India
began to provide military support equipment to Myanmar.
Most of the uniforms used by Myanmarese troops along the common
border now come from India. New Delhi is also reported to
have leased helicopters to the country's army. Malik paid
a follow-up visit to Yangon in July.
The success of India's new strategy appears to have been
reflected in the outcome of Maung Aye's trip to China in June. The
trip was partly aimed at finalising plans for a trade route
between China and Myanmar. Intelligence sources in Myanmar
say that the idea was to use a fleet of barges to transport
goods from Bhamo on the Irrawaddy river, close to the Chinese
border, to Minhla, some 1,000 kilometres down-river. From Minhla, a
road is being built across the Arakan Yoma mountain range, running
via An to Kyaukpyu on the coast. Kyaukpyu has been chosen as the
site for a new deepwater port.
But it now seems certain that although Maung Aye agreed
to strengthen trade relations, he did not permit the degree of
Chinese access to the trade route for which Beijing had
hoped. Details of the agreement reached in Beijing remain
sketchy During Maung Aye's earlier talks with Malik, however, India
urged caution and it appears that Maung Aye paid heed.
Myanmar's military government is caught in a dilemma. When no
other country was prepared to support or trade with Yangon, it had
to accept Chinese aid. But what began as a modest trade agreement
has developed into heavy political and military dependence.
Moreover, tens of thousands of illegal Chinese immigrants
have moved across the border over the past ten years and taken over
local businesses in northern Myanmar, causing friction with the
local population. Some communal clashes have already taken place
between immigrants and local tribesmen in the area. Maung Aye, a
staunch Myanmarese nationalist, is said to be more concerned about
these demographic changes than defence and trade agreements with
China.
Major political changes in Myanmar are unlikely as long as the
country's two most important leaders are still alive. Ageing
strongman Ne Win, who established army rule in Yangon in 1962, is
Still regarded as the 'Godfather' of the Burmese military
establishment. General Than Shwe, 67, is the present chairman of
the junta. But Ne Win turned 89 in May, and Than Shwe's health is
deteriorating rapidly. In May this year, Than Shwe wrote a letter
to the junta recommending his own retirement.
Without Ne Win pulling strings from behind the scenes, and with
Than Shwe no longer junta chairman, observers believe that the
rivalry between Maung Aye and the intelligence-service chief, Khin
Nyunt, could turn into an open power struggle. Given their opposing
opinions on foreign policy, the outcome of that struggle could also
determine Myanmar's place in the context of broader regional
security.
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