China and India jockey for influence in Burma
Source : The Straits Times
By The International Institute for Strategic Studies
WHILE Burma remains shunned by the West, the country's two giant neighbours, India and China, are jockeying for influence in Rangoon. Since the beginning of the year, India's army chief, General Ved Prakash Malik, has made two trips to Burma and his Burmese counterpart, General Maung Aye, has visited both India and China.
These top-level exchanges have highlighted Burma's importance in the strategic competition between Beijing and New Delhi.
China enjoys a considerable head start in the race to woo Rangoon's military leaders.
Since 1988, Burma 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 General 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-Burma relations was ""an important part of China's diplomacy concerning its surrounding areas''.
The alliance has alarmed India, which in recent years has shifted its strategy away from supporting Burma's opposition movement towards cementing ties with the junta. New Delhi has offered Burma favourable trade relations and cooperation against ethnic insurgents along the Indo-Burma frontier.
India also appears to be exploiting a rift between General Maung Aye and the head of Burma'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 General 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 Rangoon to reorientate its foreign policy radically. But the demise of Burma's older generation of military leaders could present opportunities for India to woo Burma away from China.
STRONG CHINESE ALLY
Burma emerged as a key Chinese ally on August 6, 1988, when the two countries signed an agreement establishing official trade across the common border -- hitherto-isolated Burma's first such agreement with a neighbour. Significantly, the signing took place while Burma 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 Burma. The Burma rail-heads of Myitkyina and Lashio in north-eastern Burma, 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 supported previously.
The CPB's grip weakened in 1989, when the party's hill-tribe rank-and-file mutinied against the ageing, Maoist and mainly Burmese 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 Burma had become China's principal political and military ally in South-east Asia. China poured arms into Burma to shore up the military government.
MILITARY STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE
THE isolation and condemnation experienced by both countries in the wake of the Rangoon 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, Burma 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 Burma'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 Burma since the 1950s.
Burma 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 Burma was to help safeguard the new trade routes through its potentially volatile neighbour.
Intelligence sources estimate the total value of Chinese arms deliveries to Burma in the 1990s at $1 billion to 2 billion, with most of them acquired at a discount or through barter deals or interest-free loans.
Military hardware delivered by China included:
..100 Type 69II medium-battle tanks and more than 100 Type 63 light tanks (of which only around 60 are thought to be serviceable);
..250 Type 85 armoured personnel carriers, multiple-launch rocket systems, howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, HN-5 surface-to-air missiles, mortars, assault rifles, recoilless guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and heavy trucks;
..Chengdu F-7M Airguard jet fighters, FT-7 jet trainers, A-5M ground-attack aircraft and SAC Y-8D transport aircraft; and
..Hainan-class patrol boats, Houxin-class guided-missile fast-attack craft, minesweepers and small gunboats.In the past year, China has also delivered 12 Karakoram-8 trainers/ground-attack aircraft, which are produced in a joint venture with Pakistan. The latest batch arrived in January.
INDIA'S CONCERNS
INDIA has been concerned particularly by Chinese support for the upgrading of Burma'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.
Although China's presence in the Bay of Bengal is limited currently to instructors and technicians, the new radar equipment is Chinese-made and operated probably, at least in part, by Chinese technicians, enabling Beijing's intelligence agencies to monitor this sensitive maritime region.
China and Burma have pledged to share intelligence of potential use to both countries.
In May 1998, the outspoken Indian defence minister, Mr George Fernandes, caused an uproar by accusing Beijing of helping Burma to install surveillance and communications equipment on the Coco Islands.
Burma 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 Burma.
The trawlers were flying Burma 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 buried discreetly 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-Burma relations.
COUNTER-STRATEGY
AT FIRST, India had tried to counter China's influence in Burma 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 Rangoon closer to Beijing.
uring his two-day visit to Burma in January this year, General Malik discussed plans for curbing insurgent groups based in Burma that have been active in north-eastern India.
General 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 Burma.
Most of the uniforms used by Burmese troops along the common border now come from India. New Delhi is also reported to have leased helicopters to the country's army. General Malik paid a follow-up visit to Rangoon in July.
The success of this new strategy appears to have been reflected in the outcome of General Maung Aye's trip to China in June. The trip was aimed partly at finalising plans for a trade route between China and Burma.
Intelligence sources in Burma 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 km 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 General 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 General Maung Aye's earlier talks with General Malik, however, India urged caution and it appears that General Maung Aye paid heed. Burma's military government is caught in a dilemma. When no other country was prepared to support or trade with Rangoon, 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 Burma, causing friction with the local population.
General Maung Aye, a staunch Burmese nationalist, is said to be more concerned about these demographic changes than defence and trade agreements with China.
Major political changes in Burma are unlikely as long as its two most important leaders are still alive. Ageing strongman Ne Win, who established army rule in Rangoon 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 General Ne Win turned 89 in May, and General Than Shwe's health is deteriorating rapidly. In May this year, Than Shwe wrote a letter to the junta recommending his own retirement.
Without General Ne Win pulling strings from behind the scenes, and with General Than Shwe no longer junta chairman, observers believe that the rivalry between General Maung Aye and 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 Burma's place in the context of broader regional security.