Danger: Road Works Ahead
Source : Rodney Tasker and Bertil Lintner, Far Eastern Economic Review (Dec 21,2000)
China's push to open trade routes for its poor inland provinces is raising fears that it's also seeking military access to the Indian Ocean
WHERE THERE'S SMOKE THERE'S FIRE. And where new trade routes are opened, strategic concerns are sure to follow. That's a common suspicion about China's efforts to acquire road access to the sea through its southern neighbour, Burma.
Over the past year, Chinese engineers and technicians have been spotted in northeastern Burma helping to build and improve roads running both east to west and north to south from the China-Burma border. The speculation among officials in neighbouring India, Vietnam and Thailand is that Beijing wants both a new trade route and a strategic southern outlet to the Indian Ocean.
Trade access would help some of China's deprived inland provinces, such as Yunnan and Sichuan. But it also could provide a military corridor to the sea through friendly territory--China is Burma's only major ally and its main arms supplier.
Most Thai government officials and security chiefs are reluctant to attach a military dimension to China's ambitions in the region. They instead stress the fact that many of the roads are being built by Burmese drug producers, albeit with Chinese support. But Vorasakdi Mahatdhanabol, a China expert at Chulalongkorn University's Institute of Asian Studies in Bangkok, is less reticent. "China always has a clear policy on trade," he says. "And it trades in a strategic way. In this case, it wants access to southern waters."
Vorasakdi notes that China also wants to utilize the whole length of the Mekong River and has even asked Laos for permission to blast a channel through rapids to make it navigable for bigger vessels. But the Lao have been reluctant to agree--perhaps because of pressure from a suspicious Vietnam.
So for the moment China is backing road-building in Burma, helping to upgrade routes from its southwestern province of Yunnan. China's Xinhua news agency on December 4 quoted Yunnan Governor Li Jiating as saying his province would be an "international hub" for transport through Southeast Asia and the Subcontinent. He said he had just put the plan to the central government, but a Thailand-based Western intelligence official says there's no question that this "strategic" road-building policy comes from Beijing. "It is deadly serious for the region."
On the face of it, China's plans to reach for the sea fit its efforts to improve the lot of its inland provinces. But is trade the only aim? "The Chinese are talking a lot now about trade, so I can't say it's for military purposes," says Vorasakdi. "But many countries are suspicious."
He names Vietnam, India and Laos, as well as Thailand--"depending which government is in power"--as being worried. Even a senior Thai Foreign Ministry official allows there may be more than just trade in China's scheme of things: "China is big, and with every movement you can't say it doesn't create concern. But it's a question of the degree of concern."
London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, in a July journal, goes further, noting that Burma is close to key shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. "Burma could help China to extend its military reach into a region of vital importance to Asian economies," it says. "The bulk of Japan's Middle East oil imports, for example, pass through the area." China also wants to check India's growing strategic influence, the institute suggests.
Indian security officials say New Delhi is concerned about China's alleged direct technical support in recent years for upgrades of Burmese electronic listening posts along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The suspicion is that China wants to keep an eye on military movements by India, a rival regional power against which it fought a border war in 1962.
Vietnam also worries about China's strategic intentions because of past frictions and its territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea.
The road projects China is supporting are being carried out mainly by the Wa ethnic minority in the country's northeast. The 20,000-strong United Wa State Army, or UWSA, is accused by anti-narcotics agencies of being the chief maker of methamphetamine tablets destined for Thai consumption. This year alone, Thai officials estimate, a massive 600 million tablets have flowed across the border. "This has become our top priority," says Maj.-Gen. Anu Sumitra, intelligence chief of Thailand's northern-based 3rd Army, which polices the border.
The irony of Chinese involvement with the Wa is that drugs also pass into Yunnan. This is why, according to Thai 3rd Army chiefs, Chinese officials have been seen helping the resettlement of tens of thousands of Wa to the south, near the Thai border. The idea, the army says, is to move the drug problem away from China toward Thailand. China deals with the Wa because they are the dominant ethnic force in northeast Burma and because of past collaboration--the Wa formed the core of the China-backed Communist Party of Burma, which broke up only in 1989, when the Wa made peace with Rangoon.
NOTICEABLE INCREASE
Roadworks funded by the Wa, carried out mainly by Thai contractors and supervised by Chinese technicians have been going on for three years, but have increased noticeably in the past year. Thai intelligence officials say the Chinese have been involved with a project by Burmese company Asia World to upgrade the road from Muse to Mandalay using Wa-affiliated contractors. Asia World is run by Lo Hsing-han and his son Steven Law, who was denied a visa to the United States in 1996 for alleged drugs links. The route is the main land connection between Yunnan and upper Burma.
More recently, Chinese technicians have been seen upgrading the road from Kengtung to Tachilek, opposite the Thai border town of Mae Sai, as well as building a new road from Mong La to Kengtung. Both are two-lane dirt tracks, but a recent visitor says he was told there are plans for the road to be metalled, and for the Thai contractors to leave their equipment behind so that the Wa and others can carry on the work. The visitor also says Chinese technicians work directly on the roads only when it comes to building bridges, at which they are better skilled.
The roadworks are now continuing westward and southward to Mong Mau. Reports reaching the Thai military say this is a wider, sometimes six-lane, road. That suggests a future military use rather than just a channel for drugs and civilian traffic. Thai intelligence officials say Burmese military intelligence chief Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt met the Wa in October and urged them to continue their road-building as far as Moulmein on the coast. Khin Nyunt, who's close to both the Wa and China, appears to be in a hurry, possibly fearing a looming power struggle in Rangoon.
"Khin Nyunt has been trying his best to show the world that he is the top man to reckon with," says Maj.-Gen. Anu, the Thai intelligence officer. But Thai security chiefs and diplomats in Bangkok generally tip Burmese army chief Gen. Maung Aye to succeed Gen. Than Shwe, the ailing leader of Rangoon's junta. That could place the UWSA in limbo because of their closeness to Khin Nyunt.
It also means China should maintain good relations with the Wa while it can if it wants road-building to continue smoothly. But Beijing will probably also keep the Rangoon junta sweet with aid and weapons, no matter who is in charge. Says China expert Vorasakdi: "China is trying to find any possible way of going to the sea--and it needs some cooperation from Burma, economically and militarily."