China's Rise in Mainland ASEAN by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, International Relations, Trade & Tariffs, World, Asian, Geopolitics
ISBN: 9789813275409
Google: VV6xugEACAAJ
Goodreads: 50201784
Publisher: WSPC
Published: 2019-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

Why China is Important for Myanmar

China is important for Myanmar for the purpose of political backing during the military regime, and has been its market for natural resources such as timber and jade and agriculture products, due to China taking part in the negotiating role between ethnical armed groups and the government army. Under the military regime in the past, China played very important role for Myanmar in shielding it from international pressures and providing assistance for survival, as mentioned before. After the Saffron Revolution that occurred in 2007 which was faced by forced suppression by the junta, Myanmar faced a draft solution for action by the United Nation Security Council. This resolution was shielded by the double veto of Russia and China.

Apart from political backing, China is important for Myanmar in arming its military forces. However, China’s reputation of being the largest military provider and trainer to Myanmar’s army is no longer applicable, due to the poor quality and reliability of Chinese weapons (Yi, 2013). China has also refrained from selling their best equipment to Myanmar (Swanstrom, 2012). Since the late 1990s, Myanmar diversified the weapons imports to Russia, India, Serbia, and Ukraine as its major suppliers.

Presently, China’s importance for Myanmar rests more in trade and investment arenas. China is the largest foreign investor of Myanmar and its largest trade partner (see Appendix 1). This trade figure of Myanmar and China might be undervalued because a large portion of trade between the two countries has been illegal and gray (Swanstrom, 2012).

The importance of China’s political role has lessened after Myanmar’s shift to a democratic country since 2011. Beyond this, China needs to open a new chapter in its foreign relationship policy to maintain its influence on Myanmar in other means, apart from political backing to shield Myanmar from international sanctions. A new role of China emerges as a mediator of peace-making between Myanmar’s army and ethnical armed groups such as KIA and USWA, although China still holds the policy of non-interventionism in its neighboring state’s internal affairs. In addition, China recalibrates Myanmar’s policy by replacing its previous direct relation to the government with strengthening relations with democracy forces, working with Myanmar’s civil society groups, encouraging social responsibility practices among Chinese enterprises in Myanmar and mediating peace between government and armed ethnic groups (Thar, 2015). However, this attempt to change Chinese image experiences little success so far, as a result of the continuous irresponsible behavior of Chinese businesses in trading and investment.

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