INTRODUCTION

In Myanmar, “national races” settled in the territory of Myanmar since 1823 and their descendants are automatically eligible for the first type of citizenship (see introduction by Lall and South). There are currently 136 such groups that are officially recognized as “native” or national races (one group was added at the end of U Thein Sein government). However, not many of them share the vision and values of a Burman/Buddhist “national identity” forged upon them by the state dominated by Burman elites. Successive military governments have dealt with minority nationalities’ grievances and aspiration for self-determination and federalism by crushing forces that refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of militarized and centralized state. Creating a shared identity among these nationalities has been a major challenge for post-independence Myanmar government which saw federalism as synonymous with separatism and a path leading to the disintegration of the union. Armed groups and leaders of ethnic communities on the other hand saw federalism as the best solution to be a part and citizens of the Union of Myanmar.

The 2008 Constitution attempted to deal with these grievances by offering some limited provisions for national minorities. First, the existing seven regions and seven states (which are named after seven dominant minority groups) are given limited legislative and administrative powers. Second, autonomous zones/regions are given ethnic nationalities that constitute a majority in two adjacent townships. Six such groups, Wa, Pao, Palaung, Danu, Kokang in Shan State and Naga from Sagaing are qualified for this. Thirdly, the minority that constitutes 0.1 per cent of the populations of the country's total population and reside in any given region/state are to be represented by their respective “national race affair” ministers. There were twenty-nine such positions. Studies have examined the role and performances of regional governments and the selfautonomous zones (SAZs) under U Thein Sein government. However, there have not been any studies that examine the role and implications of ethnic affairs ministers in Myanmar. To what extent these ethnic affairs ministers (referred to as “national race affairs” ministers) are able to represent their members’ interests? How much power and authority do they have? Were they able to forge a common identity of multi-ethnic states while promoting their cultures and identity and addressing grievances of their respective constituents?

Introduction

“Strategic minerals” can be defined as natural resources that are important to a state's economic development, national security or people's livelihoods. The US Geological Survey (USGS) includes additional criteria for defining “strategic minerals” as commodities that are not easily replaceable yet they are extracted mainly from foreign sources. Among industrialized nations, competition over theexploitation, production and accumulation of strategic minerals have come under international media attention.

As China's economy has been developing rapidly since economic reforms that started in 1979, its consumption and import of strategic mineral resources has also increased significantly. According to the Chinese Academy of Engineering's definition of forty-five strategic minerals, China is in short supply or cannot guarantee adequate supply of twenty-seven different kinds of strategic minerals. More than half of them are currently imported from Southeast Asia and Australia, mineral-rich regions proximate to China. Southeast Asia is also China's most important supplier for nickel, aluminum ore (i.e., bauxite) and coal. As China's demand for strategic minerals is likely to keep increasing, based on projected slowing but continuing growth, China will need to consider several important factors to ensure accurate and realistic assessments of availability and accessibility for long-term resource supplies, especially from its neighbouring regions such as Southeast Asia.

This chapter analyses the key challenges China currently faces in securing supplies of strategic mineral resources from its neighbouring or “periphery” regions (translated as “zhoubianguojia” in Chinese hanyu pinyin romanization), which refer to those countries and regions surrounding the Chinese overland borders and coastal areas. The “periphery” is a necessarily loose categorization, but it has particular significance because of the particular geopolitical and close economic relations that China shares with these countries and regions historically.

EMERGENCE OF THE UNION OF BURMA/MYANMAR

Myanmar, also called Burma, is a multi-cultural and multi-lingual country. “In fact, much of Myanmar and all its borderland regions are multi-ethnic, and they have historically remained in a state of social and political flux” (Smith 1995). Based on the precept of ethnic togetherness, the independence hero the late General Aung San articulated the agreed upon union principle or policy of “unity in diversity” as the foundation of which the “Union of Burma” came into existence on 4 January 1948.

WHO ARE ROHINGYA?

Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim community, are a borderland people with a long history of living in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Myanmar. They are a people developed from diverse stocks of people over many centuries. The Rohingya have historical connections to the high cultures of Bengal, Persia and Arabia. Due to their origin and culture, as well as their present geographical location, there is no doubt that, historically, they have mixed more with Indian people than with the Burmese. The Chandra dynasty was an ancient Bengali kingdom of Arakan. Thus, Maurice Collis, who worked and lived in Burma from 1912 to 1934, writes: “Arakan was then an Indian land, its inhabitants being Indians similar to those resident in Bengal” (Collis 1985, p. 135). The group identity of the Rohingya is marked by a shared religion, geography, language and culture. They believe they are culturally distinctive and different to outsiders. They are distinguishable from the surrounding communities. However, Rakhine chauvinists and other extremists in Burma do not necessarily agree with these views: like the former military regime, most of them reject Rohingyas’ right to exist in Myanmar.

ARAKAN IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The historical situation of Arakan in terms of the growth of its Muslim population cannot be looked at in isolation, but should be considered in the regional context. Situated in the tri-border region between modern-day Burma, India and Bangladesh, Arakan is on the frontline between the Islamic and Buddhist worlds of Asia, and amidst the Indo-Aryan and Mongoloid races.

Throughout history Arakan maintained very close ties with Muslim Bengal, which had always helped and stood by the people of Arakan in the event of any natural disaster or external aggression. Particularly, the relation between Arakan and Chittagong is influenced by geographical, ethnological, cultural and historical considerations.

Introduction

In the late 1990s, the global price for natural rubber soared and Xishuangbanna — a major rubber producing area in remote southwest China — grew rich. Across the border in northern Laos, farmers and state officials looked on in envy at this miracle cash crop. Some began experimenting with it. When the Chinese government established the Opium Replacement Program (ORP) in 2004, it was welcomed in Laos as further support for the growing rubber sector. As a result, Lao rubber cultivation expanded significantly. The ORP was established to incentivize large-scale agribusiness projects to provide alternative livelihoods schemes as substitutes for opium cultivation in Laos and Myanmar. Chinese companies rushed to take advantage of the ORP and its financial supports. Though a range of cash crops were allowed, the vast majority of ORP funding went to establishing rubber plantations. Amid the initial rush, Chinese investors, Lao farmers and Lao state officials recounted stories of rubber's success in Xishuangbanna as justification. Rubber was a silver bullet that contributed to development, poverty alleviation, and modernization. But in 2011, as global rubber prices plummeted, dreams of new motorbikes, paved roads, corporate profits and hefty government revenues were suddenly dashed.

The drop in rubber prices also dashed claims that China's development success was wholly replicable in other contexts.

Over the last three decades, one of the most significant changes in the context of development in the Global South is the transformation of China from a capital deficient developing country to a rising capital exporter in the world economy. For a long time, the main form of China's capital export is its massive purchase of US Treasury bonds. But since the Hu Jintao era (2002–12), the Chinese state has diverted ever larger part of its foreign reserves to outgoing direct investment in infrastructures, mines, and other assets in the developing world. China's official financial institutions also started offering concession loans to other developing countries.

Africa has been the most prominent recipient of Chinese investment, partly because of the PRC's longstanding presence in the continent since the height of Cold War and partly because of Africa's abundance in fossil fuel and mineral resources that China needs desperately for its roaring developmental machine. “China in Africa” has been an established field in development studies. Numerous papers and books debated whether China's increasing presence in Africa would elevate the region's growth prospect or whether it represents little more than a new form of extractive colonialism.

China's ambitions in becoming a major capital exporter to the developing world is surely not restricted to Africa. Chinese investments in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia has been increasing rapidly. Among all these regions, Southeast Asia, which is right at the doorstep of China, is the most interesting one, and it is poised to becoming the most important arena for China's overseas projection of political-economic influences.

China's presence in Southeast Asia dates back to premodern times, when many states in the region paid tribute to the dynastic state ofimperial China and conducted trade with China via Chinese diasporic traders in the region. Time and again, some states in the region attempted to challenge Chinese dominance and sever its tributary ties to China. But at least in the perception of many officials and intellectuals in China, these challenges did not alter the reality that China had been hegemonic over Southeast Asia all along until Western imperialism shattered this Sinocentric other in the mid-nineteenth century. China's link to the region receded in the mid-twentieth century because of Cold War division, only to be restored after China's reintegration into the capitalist world in the 1980s.

Following the Japanese invasion of Lower Burma in early 1942, the British administration in Arakan1 collapsed in late March/early April. In a matter of days, communal violence broke out in the rural areas of central and north Arakan (Akyab and Kyaukphyu districts). Muslim villagers from Chittagong who had settled in Arakan since the late nineteenth century were attacked, driven away or killed in Minbya, Myebon, Pauktaw and other townships of central Arakan. A few weeks later, Arakanese Buddhist villagers living in the predominantly Muslim townships of Maungdaw and Buthidaung were taken on by Chittagonian Muslims, their villages destroyed and people killed in great numbers. Muslims fled to the north while Buddhists fled to the south and from 1942 to 1945, the Arakanese countryside was ethnically divided between a Muslim north and a Buddhist south. Several thousand Buddhists and Muslims were relocated by the British to camps in Bengal. The unspeakable outburst of violence has been described with various expressions, such as “massacre”, “bitter battle” or “communal riot” reflecting different interpretations of what had happened. In the twenty-first century, the description “ethnic cleansing” would likely be considered as a legally appropriate term. Buddhists and Muslims alike see the 1942 violence as a key moment of their ongoing ethno-religious and political divide.

The waves of communal clashes of 1942 have been poorly documented, sparsely investigated and rarely studied. They are not recorded in standard textbooks on Burma/Myanmar and, surprisingly, they were even absent from contemporary reports and articles that described Burma's situation during and after World War II. From a historiographic point of view, the 1942 atrocities in Arakan may be considered as an example of the academic marginalization of the borderlands of Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh and Arakan/Rakhine State in modern times. In 1952, B.R. Pearn, a professor of history from Rangoon University, wrote a confidential report for the Foreign Office on the Mujahid revolt that consumed North Arakan since 1948. The report contained a historical background that included the 1942 violence. However eight years earlier, Pearn himself had read a paper at the Royal Society of Arts in London (“Burma since the invasion”, 14 December 1944) that did not even hint at the forced displacement and the killings that had taken place two years before in Arakan (Pearn 1945; see also Bowerman 1946).

1. What does citizenship mean to you?

I was born in Myanmar, and so I am a citizen of Myanmar. Even after I joined the Karen revolution, I still felt that I was a citizen of my country, Burma. After all, I hold a citizen's ID card (Citizenship Scrutiny Card).

Being a citizen is like being a member of the family, and family members don't always get along peacefully! All citizens should have rights, equal with each other. This is particularly important for Karen people, who live spread across the country, and not just in Karen State. It's important that Karen and other ethnic people have rights to self-determination in their own homeland territory and also in other parts of the country.

2. What are the problems Karen people face as citizens of Myanmar/Burma? How have Karen people been treated by the state/government in the past, and present? What are the main challenges?

In the past, during the long years of armed conflict, Karen people faced many difficulties. Issues of citizenship were particularly difficult for people living in areas under the control or influence of the KNU, and other armed groups. They often did not have a chance to receive ID cards, or be recognized as full citizens of Myanmar. The government, and particularly the Myanmar Army, thought of them as KNU supporters, and often treated very badly. It was difficult for villagers to get even basic services from the government, and they were often abused and marginalized. Even for Karen people living “inside” the country, in areas under government control, it was difficult for them to learn their language, as ethnic languages were not used in government service or in schools. Karen and other ethnic nationality people were often looked down on by members of the majority community, and there was great prejudice and widespread racism. Things have started to improve in the last few years, particularly because of the peace process — but there is still a long way to go. Many people in the government and the military are still suspicious of ethnic minority communities.

3. What is the relationship between Karen people and other citizens of the country?

(Relations with the Bama community:) I come from a Christian family in the Tanintharyi Region. Our community has suffered many long years of oppression.

In 2004, when I published my second book in the Myanmar language titled Compromising with the Burmese Generals, I quoted a paragraph from Allister Sparks’ Beyond the Miracle: Inside New South Africa:

Sparks, a South African who witnessed and wrote about the brutality of the South African apartheid regime as a journalist, was talking about his feelings regarding apartheid. This was exactly how I felt about “Burma” (which was how I named the country as an exile). Calling Myanmar “Burma” was an act of defiance for me, because I was against what “Myanmar” represented under military rule. Myanmar did not represent me; it was to be abhorred.

There were times that when I was “emotionally stateless”. I remember watching the football final between Thailand and Myanmar at the Southeast Asian Games in 1994. It was one of the few exciting games I have ever watched Myanmar play against its rival neighbour. But while my colleagues, led by Moe Thee Zun — a military regime hater himself — wildly cheered for the Myanmar team at the house we rented in Bangkok (through a Myanmar friend who was a legal resident in Thailand), I was quiet because I was not sure if I should support the Myanmar national team. The Myanmar team did very well but was unlucky in the end as a header from Thai striker Kiatisuk “Zico” Senamuang (former Thai football coach) decided the tie.

The match was the talk of the town for both Myanmar and Thais and my colleagues continued to discuss it endlessly. But I was quiet. I was not even sure if I would celebrate if the Myanmar team had won. That was my problem — I could not emotionally connect myself to the Myanmar team because I felt the team represented a regime that I was against. I thought the team itself was also corrupt with its tainted and biased selection and the national football officials bowing to the whims of the ruling generals.

Introduction

China's economic engagement in Southeast Asia has grown markedly in recent years, and this includes the energy and mining industries. In addition to importing energy and mineral commodities from the region, Chinese enterprises have been investing in primary resources and constructing energy infrastructure. While the objectives of these companies are often primarily commercial, they are also multi-faceted and involve the ambitions of both the enterprises and the Chinese government. In addition, this mix of objectives varies between the different resource industries. The aims of this chapter are to identify the specific motivations of Chinese enterprises and government in their engagements with Southeast Asia's energy and mineral resources, and examine some of the implications from their mix of corporate and state drivers.

Introduction

If China has been “going global” since the early 2000s, it has gone regional for far longer. China's Cold War-era influence in Southeast Asia prior to the 1980s is well documented, after which both foreign and domestic difficulties led to a period of relative withdrawal. Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, however, China's foreign policy toward its southern neighbours has increasingly re-embraced its outwardly engaged version of “peaceful coexistence”, as first articulated in the 1950s. Seeking both regional political stability and, perhaps more pointedly, access to natural resources for its own ongoing economic development, China's leaders are widely understood to see Southeast Asia as a strategic sphere of influence. In such a context, they have looked to development cooperation as a core mode of regional engagement for much of the last two decades.

As a key locale of this strategy, Cambodia receives close attention from Beijing, given its pivotal position in the region. Since 1996, the relationship between Phnom Penh and Beijing has deepened.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.