China seeks copper firewall in Myanmar

[This piece appeared at Asia Times Online on December 15, 2012.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is attempting to establish a modus vivendi with the new political order in Myanmar. With the violent government crackdown on demonstrators at a copper mine-site at Monywa, in northwestern Myanmar, on November 29, things just got considerably more difficult.

Postponement of the China-backed Myitsone dam project was the price tag for the entry of Prime Minister Thein Sein into the good graces of the West. The PRC has, for the time being, not made a fuss but would clearly prefer that Myitsone was the only big-ticket Chinese project that took a bullet for the sake of Myanmar's rebalanced foreign policy.

The PRC is hoping to shield its projects - such as the coppermine and a twin-pipeline project crossing from the Bay of Bengal to China's Yunnan province - through belated hearts and minds outreach to the public in Myanmar (also known as Burma), and serious jawboning and arm-twisting in the halls of government. The current government leadership in Myanmar and, to a certain extent, Aung San Suu Kyi, seem on board, at least for the time being. However, widespread resentment of government oppression and Chinese economic exploitation is driving Myanmar's politics, possibly further and faster than the national elite prefers.

The PRC has to worry that the Myanmarese democracy-and-national-reconciliation express, now chugging determinedly to 2015 elections for a parliament that is supposed to be 65% free-and-fair elected and 35% appointed military officers, will not hop the tracks to administer revolutionary justice to Myanmar's generals for widespread human rights violations and corruptly selling out Myanmar's wealth to the Chinese, putting paid to China's economic interests in the process.

Under these circumstances, the last thing Beijing needed was for Myanmar's present government to be seen brutalizing monks and students in order to protect the interests of the Myanmarese and Chinese military in a polluting copper mine.

China's participation in the mine is relatively recent, dating back only to 2010 However, the mine has been in the crosshairs of domestic and overseas Myanmar democracy activists for years. The original investment in the mine came from a Canadian mine developer, Ivanhoe, which was targeted for its alleged willingness to ignore international sanctions and serve as an economic prop of the military junta.

Even Ivanhoe's efforts to divest itself of the mine came in for criticism as it kicked its interest back to Myanmar's government to sell (instead of selling it to the PRC directly), thereby apparently giving the generals a second chance to secure graft on the deal.

The fact that the mine is a joint venture of the commercial arm of Myanmar's military - the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL) - and Wanbao Mining Ltd, a subsidiary of China's main arms manufacturer, NORINCO - added to the shadow over the project.

Copper mines, which generate sulfuric acid in order to reduce the ore to metal, are not the cleanest, most environmentally friendly industrial facilities at the best of times and it is safe to assume that Monywa is not the best, cleanest, or most environmentally friendly of copper mines. Pollution from the mine has been blamed for infertile cropland, tainted groundwater, and birth defects.

Therefore, it is not too surprising that, when the operators started expanding mining operations to a new site, Letpadaung, local and national activists converged in September to set up camps at the gates of the project and demand its closure. Members of the Generation 88 student activist group inserted themselves as mediator/advocates and the demonstrations grew and achieved national prominence.

The international NGO community also piled on, playing up the environmental destruction angle:

The Chindwin River is a major tributary of the Irrawaddy River and runs by misty-blue mountains and charming villages while passing through a region of abundant natural resources and fertile meadows.

"The river runs through intact forests in both the Tamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary and the Hugawng Valley Tiger Reserve, the largest tiger reserve in the world. It sustains vital habitats for a wide array of wildlife, including globally endangered species, tigers, elephants and the endemic Burmese Roof Turtle," says the Burma Rivers Network NGO. [1]

Though willing to pay lip service to addressing local and activist concerns, the government was apparently not of a mind to let the mine serve as another area of Sino-Myanmar friction and decided to clear out the several hundred protesters on the grounds that their encampments were illegal and unapproved.

Instead of efficiently evicting some rabble-rousing monks and strident students and wiping the slate clean for a fresh reconsideration of the project and the fortunes of the Burmese Roof Turtle by the new, more pro-Western, pro-business political grouping, fiasco ensued.

It has not yet been determined what happened on November 29, but something incendiary somehow got involved - perhaps flares, hot tear-gas projectiles, or some unknown weapon - and several dozen people suffered serious burns as the encampments were cleared out. The national news was dominated by pictures of burned monks and Monywa is now associated with fresh crimes by the regime instead of a new, more democratic order.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) raised the specter of use of incendiary weapons against civilians - a violation of the Geneva Convention. [2]

Myanmar's Eleven Media, an anti-Chinese rabble-rouser that had previously attracted the PRC's ire for false and incendiary claims that pagodas and temples were being demolished during construction at Letpadaung, went with assertions that "chemical weapons" had been deployed during clearance of the camps. [3]

There was also an effort to frame the crackdown as an anti-Buddhist sacrilege - a virtual political death sentence in Myanmar - because the camps were cleared on the night of the eighth full moon, "sacred day of offering woven kahtina robes to the Lord Buddha." [4]

Government efforts to make things right by apologizing to the burned monks were rebuffed, as an article in Irrawaddy, "Monks Suffer in Dignity But Shall Not Forgive", reveals:

On Saturday, the Sagaing Division Police Chief San Yu apologized for the raid and claimed that it was an accident, generating nationwide anger.

"We don't accept their apologies," said Wunna Theddhi faintly yet firmly from his hospital bed. "We demand that Thein Sein apologizes to us personally and completely shuts down the project. If they do so, we are happy to forgive them."

"We don't accept their offerings either," said Thusiddha. "For they are trying to appease us for what they have done," referring to some packs of soft drinks sent by the local authorities that lie untouched in the hospital corridor. [5]

Monks refusing alms is the ultimate weapon against unworthy civilians in Theravada Buddhism.

Follow-on demonstrations against the project, and against the Chinese presence in Myanmar, led to further arrests in Yangon, Mandalay, and other locations. A former ambassador of Myanmar to China warned that events could spiral out of control and lead to a crisis in Sino-Myanmarese relations. [6]

Aung San Suu Kyi's visit to Monywa appears to have been originally scheduled as part of the work of a commission to investigate the environmental costs and economic aspects of the project in response to the demonstrations, presumably in order to tweak the project and get buy-in from activists rather than cancel it.

However, the flame-licked debacle of November 29 turned everything upside down. Instead of fact-finding, Aung San Suu Kyi's first stop was at the hospital to commiserate with injured protesters. The commission's mandate and numbers were announced and then readjusted and reannounced in an awkward, public matter to include investigation of the botched eviction.

Notably, despite the fact that pro-democracy activists of Generation 88 (who had been involved in the protests) declined to join the commission, Aung San Suu Kyi still agreed to head it.

The Chinese government announced its expectations for the process in a statement and interviews by the Chinese ambassador to Myanmar, Li Junhua. While determinedly striking a conciliatory note, providing details on the project meant to clarify that it was not an instance of unscrupulous Chinese rapacity, and stating it would cooperate with the investigatory commission, the PRC made it clear that it wanted acknowledgment that its contract with the Myanmar side was legal and enforceable.

"We made a contract with Myanmar after jointly discussing all issues, such as relocation, compensation, environmental protection and profit sharing, through bilateral negotiations that meet Myanmar's laws and regulations. However, these problems happened because people lack access to this information. So, they misunderstand," he said. …

Mr Li said the Chinese investor in the Monywa copper mine project, Wanbao Mining, began partnering with army-run Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) in 2010. Wanbao is a subsidiary of state-owned arms manufacturer China North Industries Corporation, better known as Norinco.

Under the terms of the 30-year contract for the Letpadaung expansion at Monywa, Wanbao will invest US$1 billion, he said, with the Myanmar government to receive 16.8% of the profits, followed by UMEHL with 13.8pc and Wanbao with 13.3pc.

He said the company had paid more than $5 million in compensation for the more than 6,000 acres confiscated for the expansion - or about $830 an acre - and built more than 200 replacement homes, as well as a school, monastery and hospital. [7]

China's fair-and-balanced foreign affairs tabloid, Global Times, clearly regards Myanmar as a major test of the authoritarian holy grail of yoking democratic agitation to the cause of economic development. In near-daily reports on conditions in Myanmar, it has asserted that democratic aspirations must be heeded but...

China need not lose confidence in its peripheral diplomacy due to the failure of its investments in Myanmar. What we see in the country is the inevitable impact of its democratization.

... Of course, Chinese companies should focus more on the people of the countries they invest in. It is the objective requirement of the wave of democratization that has swept over poor countries.

The Letpadaung copper mine crisis has drawn Chinese people's attention to Myanmar. Democracy has brought hope there, but it has also blocked a major construction project instead of liberating productive forces.

This kind of democracy can neither bring high growth for the Myanmarese economy nor result in tangible benefits for the people. Western countries' lifting of sanctions cannot bring wealth. [8]

Chinese media has determinedly "worked the refs" by declaring that Aung San Suu Kyi acknowledges the principle that contracts be honored. Global Times correspondent Yu Jincui visited Myanmar and reported relatively frankly on anti-Chinese protests. Re Letpadaung, he wrote:

The Letpadaung protests are the largest and most significant ones. Several months of slow boil brought the issue far beyond just seeking more land compensation for local villagers. Locals want the project suspended and Chinese enterprises to be kicked out of Myanmar.

The challenges of appeasing the protesters while protecting and encouraging foreign investment and job creation make solving the issue tricky.

The contract to develop the Letpadaung mine was signed in 2010, under the approval of the Myanmar government. Opposition leader and parliament member Aung San Suu Kyi, who was chosen to head an investigation group into the project on December 1, admitted the necessity of defending the country's credibility during her visit to the mine to meet both the company side and protesters in late November. [9]

Global Times also tried to draw a line in the sand, declaring that if Letpadaung was canceled, China should demand compensation (and not defer the issue, as it has apparently done on Myitsone):

We must not give up on the project. Even if it is eventually stopped, Chinese companies should receive compensation according to the contract and international practice.

On the Myanmar government side, things were apparently in disarray and message discipline took a beating A key government economic advisor, Aung Min, displayed commendable honesty but not a great deal of political tact in announcing the government's desire not to terminate the mine contract, as Aung Zaw, columnist for The Irrawaddy, wrote:

Aung Min, who exchanged some harsh words with protesters at Letpadaung a few days before the crackdown on Thursday, raised the specter of China when he spoke of the costs of shutting down big projects like the copper mine and the Myitsone hydropower dam in Kachin State, which was ordered suspended last year.

"If China asks for compensation, even the Myitsone Dam shutdown would cost US$3 billion," he said. "But China still hasn't said a word about it. We are afraid of China."

Aung Min added that Burma should be grateful to China for its aid in 1988, when the Southeast Asian nation faced a food crisis due to nationwide unrest. He added that in the 1980s, the former Chinese president Deng Xiaoping decided to cut off support to the Communist Party of Burma, weakening the Marxist insurgency against the central government.

"So we don't dare to have a row with China!" said Aung Min. "If they feel annoyed with the shutdown of their projects and resume their support to the communists, the economy in border areas would backslide. So you'd better think seriously."

Many have criticized Aung Min for his undiplomatic suggestion that Burma's giant neighbor might actually try destabilize the country if it doesn't get its way, but others have said that he was merely letting the public know the reality that Burma faces. [10]

Defending Sino-Myanmarese economic and security engagement is not a popular platform in Myanmar, as the reporting of the Guardian on the scene in Letpadaung makes clear:

Organisers have given fiery speeches directed at China. "Driving out [the Chinese] company is our aim," Thwe Thwe Win, 24, a vegetable seller from the village of Wat Hmei, threatened by the expansion plans, shouted into the hand-held loudspeaker outside the plant last week. "No Chinese on our soil. No Chinese here near our village," the crowd shouted back. [11]

Ambassador Li stated perhaps with more optimism than accuracy that Myitsone and Letpadaung were the only two troubled Chinese projects in Myanmar.

Although the Myanmarese political elite across the spectrum from Thein Sein to Aung San Suu Kyi apparently have no stomach for a political platform of economic expulsion of China from Myanmar, populist politics encourages an anti-Chinese agenda.

Aung Zaw of The Irrawaddy delivered the unwelcome news that anti-regime agitation and attacks on Chinese economic interests will be a political perennial inside Myanmar:

In the future, many activists will no doubt begin to raise the issue of the gas pipeline project and other hydropower projects in Burma. China is one of the main investors in all of these projects.

The Chinese side has taken the position that enforcement of the contracts with PRC companies is a key measure of the openness and rule of law that Myanmar is hoping to sell to Western investors. If, on the other hand, the interests of China and its allies in the Myanmar government and military are threatened, the PRC could presumably quickly make Myanmar, with its welter of aggrieved ethnicities in its unsecured borderlands, a most unwelcoming investment destination.

The Chinese (and Thein Sein) can take some consolation in the idea that the re-emergence of Aung San Suu Kyi into political life means that dissent is no longer dominated by the priorities of vitriolic chauvinists, confrontational students, and intransigent, juice-box refusing Buddhist monks.

As Aung San Suu Kyi plans her path to national political power over the next five years, she is probably considering a middle path between populism and canny compromise. In a press conference on December 6, she struck some "sanctity of contract" notes that the PRC probably found reassuring:

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said the conflict over the mine was the result of a lack of transparency and accountability between the government and the public. She said she valued public participation in the investigation process but warned against unlawful acts.

"If people want to enjoy the rights of citizenship they also should accept the responsibilities that come from that," she said.

"[Letpadaung] residents said they want to stop the project completely when our team members discussed it with them. We will take into account their opinion. But we understand that this project is being done in accordance with a contract. Therefore, we must negotiate with each other and solve the problems through peaceful means. That's the democratic way, so if we want to build democracy state, there must be a negotiation process. It's not democracy if we just stand for what we want without negotiation." [12]

The commission's conclusions are scheduled for release on January 31, 2013.

Notes:
1. In Pictures - Monywa Copper Mine, Irrawaddy, Sep 15, 2012.
2. 'AAPP Burma' condemns crackdown on anti-copper mine protesters, Asian Correspondent, November 29, 2012.
3. Chemical weapons used' in copper mine protest, The Nation, Dec 5, 2012.
4. Suu Kyi takes tough stance on Burma copper-mine row, Asian Correspondent, December 3, 2012.
5. Monks Suffer with Dignity but Shall Not Forgive, Irrawaddy, December 3, 2012.
6. Copper Mine Protest Heats Up with Arrests, Cetri, December 7, 2012.
7. China vows to respect findings of mine probe, Myanmar Times, December 10, 2012.
8. Weak democracy hurts Myanmar business, Global Times, November 29, 2012.
9. Myanmar protests painful but inevitable part of democratic transition, Global Times, December 3, 2012.
10. Burma's Copper Mine Saga Opens Old Wound, Irrawaddy, December 3, 2012.
11. Burma: riot police move in to break up copper mine protest, Guardian, November 29, 2012.
12. Commission will find fair solution, says NLD leader, Myanmar Times, December 10, 2012.

China checks the US picket line

[The Asia Times Online yearender, which appeared on Dec. 22, 2012.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]

The passing year was the People's Republic of China's (PRC) first opportunity to get up close and personal with the United States' pivot back to Asia, the strategic rebalancing that looks a lot like containment.

The PRC spent a lot of 2012 wrestling with contentious neighbors emboldened by the US policy, like Vietnam and the Philippines; combating American efforts to nibble away at the corners of China's spheres of influence on the Korean peninsula and Southeast Asia; and engaging in a test of strength and will with the primary US proxy in the region, Japan.

This state affairs was misleadingly if predictably spun in the Western press as "assertive China exacerbates regional tensions", while a more accurate reading was probably "China's rivals exacerbate regional tensions in order to stoke fears of assertive China."

Whatever the framing, this was the year that the world - and in particular Japan - discovered that the PRC can and could kick back against the pivot.

The fat years for "rising China" were the presidencies of George W Bush. Preoccupied with cascading disasters in the Middle East, a burgeoning fiscal deficit that demanded a foreign partner with an insatiable appetite for US debt, and, later on, a meltdown in the US and world economies, Bush had no stomach for mixing it up with China.

The PRC took the ball and ran with it, emerging as an overpowering presence in East Asia, plowing into Africa, establishing itself as a crucial paymaster for the European Union, and hammering away at the final bastions of Western leadership of the post-World War II planet: the major multinational policy and financial institutions.

Rollback was inevitable, and it was pursued, purposefully, carefully, and incrementally under Barack Obama.

Also back is ineffable American self-regard. With the election and re-election of a black president from a modest background, the United States reclaimed as its assumed birthright the moral high ground, something that one might think the US had forfeited for a decade or two thanks to the Iraq War, American mismanagement of the global financial system, and the failure to face the existential issue of climate change.

It would have been amusing, in a grim sort of way, to see if the election of Mitt Romney as president would have elicited the same ecstatic neo-liberal squealing about the glories of American democracy that we saw with President Obama's re-election. In any case, the comically inept Romney was no match for the popularity, intelligence, and relentless organizational focus of Obama and American self-righteousness - or, as Evan Olnos of the New Yorker would approvingly characterize it, America's "moral charisma" - is back.

With the United States firmly back in the leadership saddle, at least as far as the foreign affairs commentariat is concerned, China has nothing to show the world except the flaws of an authoritarian political and economic system, nothing to teach except as an object lesson in how to avoid them, and no right to participate in any world leadership councils except by Western sufferance.

This attitude dovetails almost perfectly with Obama's apparent disdain for the PRC as an opaque, unfriendly, and unsavory regime that responds to engagement with overreach, one that must be stressed, pressured, and coerced in order to drive it toward humanity's preferred goals. Under the leadership of the Obama administration, the West has made the significant decision to restrain China instead of accommodate it.

China will be a welcome partner in the world order, at least defined by the West, only if it democratizes, dismantles its state-controlled economy, and adheres to the standards of liberal multinational institutions in seeking its place in the world order. These outcomes are so far off the radar as far as the current PRC leadership is concerned, the only near-term endgame on these terms is regime collapse.

That's a risky bet. If the regime doesn't collapse, a simmering, constitutional hostility between the PRC and its many antagonists is on the books for the foreseeable future.

China's response has been to avoid confronting the United States head-on, instead probing for weaknesses in the US chain of proxies and allies, while trying to shore up weaknesses in its own proxies and allies.

The only unalloyed win for the PRC in East Asia in 2012 was the re-election of the Kuomintang's Ma Ying-jeou as president of Taiwan. President Ma has a steady-as-she-goes policy of minimal friction with the PRC, in contrast to the fractious pro-independence and pro-Japanese Democratic Progressive Party. In 2012 he went a step further. In a move that was largely ignored in the Western press because it complicated the narrative of unilateral PRC thuggery, Ma dispatched a flotilla of official and unofficial vessels to give grief to the Japanese coastguard presence around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.

Other than Taiwan, one of the brighter spots in the authoritarian firmament has been the gradual pro-China/pro-reform tilt of North Korea under Kim Jong-eun. The PRC is still making the Obama administration pay for its disastrous miscalculation in 2009, when the US thought that the PRC's overwhelming trade ties with South Korea would cause Beijing to abandon North Korea in the aftermath of the Cheonan outrage (the sinking of a South Korean frigate by forces unknown, but widely assumed to be North Korea) and join the United States in a multi-lateral diplomatic and sanctions-fueled beatdown of the Pyongyang regime.

Instead, the late Kim Jung-il realized that his long-standing opera-bouffe efforts at engagement with the United States were futile and got on his armored train to journey into China and fall into the welcoming arms of Hu Jintao.

On the other side of the ledger, Myanmar threatened to slide out of the PRC camp with the decision of the government to rebalance its foreign policy away from China toward the United States and reach an accommodation with domestic pro-democracy forces. The necessary demonstrations of pro-democracy and pro-Western enthusiasm by the Thein Sein government were 1) the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and her return to public life and 2) postponement of the Myitsone hydroelectric project.

The Myitsone project was unpopular domestically because it was PRC-funded and had been adopted as a symbol of the casual sell-out of Myanmar interests to China by corrupt generals. Postponing Myitsone was popular with the West because it raised the possibility it would block development of Myanmar's sizable hydroelectric potential by China and, instead, allow Western interests, shut out of the Myanmar economy for years because of sanctions, to reorient hydropower exports away from China and towards Thailand.

The PRC has responded cautiously to the Myanmar shift, apparently taking consolation in its dominant role in Myanmar's economy, foreign trade, and security policy thanks to the long and porous border the two countries share.

Myanmar's political elites, including Aung San Suu Kyi, apparently have decided that an anti-China economic jihad would be counter-productive and the PRC has good reason to hope that by upping its public relations game, spreading money around to deserving citizens both inside and outside politics (and perhaps discretely renegotiating some terms of some excessively favorable sweetheart deals with the Myanmar junta), it can successfully navigate the now dangerous shoals of Myanmar multi-party politics (in which a traditional strain of anti-Chinese populism has become an inevitable tool of political and popular mobilization).

In a sign that the United States also hoped to put Laos and Cambodia into play, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a rare visit to the Laotian capital of Vientiane before putting in an appearance at Phnom Penh for a get-together of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Results were mixed, as Cambodia loyally defended the PRC from an attempt to place an ASEAN united front versus China concerning a South China Sea mediation initiative on the agenda.

Cambodian and Laotian desires to distance themselves from the big bully of Asia, the PRC, are perhaps counterbalanced by their desire to keep the big bully of Southeast Asia, Vietnam, at bay. As for Vietnam, it has learned that, as far as the United States is concerned, China is not Iran and Vietnam is not Israel - at least for now, and quite possibly for always.

Even as the United States has vocally supported freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and a multilateral united front in dealing with the PRC, it has avoided "taking sides in territorial disputes" - the only kind of dispute that the nations surrounding the South China Sea care about, since "the PRC threat to freedom of navigation" in the area is little more than a nonsensical canard.

With the US Seventh Fleet unlikely to slide into the South China Sea and blast away at Chinese vessels as an adjunct to the Vietnamese navy, Vietnam appears to have drawn the lesson from the PRC's ferocious mugging of Japan that the disadvantages of auditioning for the role of frontline state in the anti-China alliance may outweigh the benefits.

The big story in East Asian security affairs this year was the PRC's decision to bully Japan, ostensibly over the idiotic fetish of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, but actually because of Tokyo's decision to give moral and material support to the US pivot by once again making an issue of the wretched (Taiwanese) islands.

In 2010, China made the diplomatically disastrous decision to retaliate officially against a Japanese provocation - Seiji Maehara's insistence on trying a Chinese fishing trawler captain in Japanese courts for a maritime infraction near the Senkakus. A relatively limited and measured effort to send a message to Japan by a go-slow enforcement effort in the murky demimonde of rare earth exports became a China bashing cause celebre, an opportunity for Japan to raise the US profile in East Asian maritime security matters, and an invitation to China's other neighbors to fiddle with offshore islands and attempt to elicit a counterproductive overreaction from Beijing.

In 2012, the PRC was ready, probably even spoiling for a fight, seizing the opportunity even when the Yoshihiko Noda government clumsily tried to defuse/exploit the Senkaku issue by cutting in line in front of Tokyo governor and ultranationalist snake-oil peddler Shintaro Ishihara to purchase three of the islands.

This time, Chinese retaliation was clothed in the diplomatically and legally impervious cloak of populist attacks on Japanese economic interests inside China. The 2012 campaign did far more damage to Japan than the 2010 campaign, which was conceived as a symbolic shot across the bow of Japan Inc. The Japanese economy was not doing particularly well even before the 2012 Senkaku protests devastated Japanese auto sales and overall Japanese investment in China, raising the possibility that China might deliver a mortal blow, and not just a pointed message, to Japan.

The major US effort to refocus the economic priorities of Asia and offer material benefits to countries like Japan which line up against the PRC - the China-excluding Trans Pacific Partnership - is facing difficulties in its advance as economies hedge against the distinct possibility that China and not the United States (which is looking more like an exporting competitor than demand engine for Asian tigers) will be the 21st century driver of Asian growth.

It looks likely the US pivot into Asia will be a costly, grinding war of attrition fought on multiple fronts - with Japan suffering a majority of the damage - instead of a quick triumph for either side.

This year, let's call it a draw.

Call it a draw in most of the rest of the world as well.

The Indian government apparently feels that the Himalayas provide an adequate no-man's-land between the PRC and India and warily navigated a path between China and the United States.

With the re-election to president of Vladimir Putin and a return to a more in-your-face assertion of Russian prerogatives vis-a-vis the United States, Russia is less likely to curry favor with the US at Chinese expense than it was under Dmitry Medvedev.

On the other hand, the European Union, winner of the Nobel Prize for Pathetic Lurching Dysfunction, excuse me, the Nobel Peace Price, is desperately cleaving to the United States in most geopolitical matters, including a stated aversion to Chinese trade policies, security posture, and human rights abuses. It remains to be seen whether this resolve is rewarded by a recovery in the Western economies, or falls victim to Europe's need for a Chinese bailout.                                                                                                                                                                                                            The most interesting and revealing arena for US-China competition and cooperation is one of the most unlikely: the Middle East. The PRC has apparently been attempting a pivot of its own, attempting to leverage its dominant position as purchaser of Middle Eastern energy from both Saudi Arabia and Iran into a leadership role.

With the United States approaching national, or at least continental self-sufficiency through domestic fracking and consumption of Canadian tar sands - and ostentatiously pivoting into Asia - it might seem prudent and accommodating to welcome Chinese pretensions to leadership in the Middle East.

The PRC has a not-unreasonable portfolio of Middle East positions: lip service at least to Palestinian aspirations, acceptance of Israel's right to exist and thrive, a regional security regime based on economic development instead of total war between Sunni and Shi'ite blocs, grudging accommodation of Arab Spring regimes (as long as they want to do business), an emir-friendly preference for stability over democracy, and an end to the Iran nuclear idiocy.

As to the issue of the Syrian bloodletting, the PRC has consistently promoted a political solution involving a degree of power-sharing between Assad and his opponents. The United States, perhaps nostalgic for the 30 years of murder it has abetted in the Middle East and perversely unwilling to let go of the bloody mess, has refused to cast China for any role other than impotent bystander.

Syria, in particular, symbolizes America's middle-finger approach to Middle East security. Washington is perfectly happy to see the country torn to pieces, as long as it denies Iran, Russia, and China an ally in the region.

The message to China seems to be: the United States can "pivot" into Asia and threaten a security regime that has delivered unprecedented peace and prosperity, but the PRC has no role in the Middle East even though - make that because - that region is crucial to China's energy and economic security.

This is a dynamic that invites China to muscle up militarily, project power, and strengthen its ability to control its security destiny throughout the hemisphere.

The likely response is not going to be for threatened regional actors to lean on Uncle Sam, which has more of a sporting than existential interest in keeping a lid on things in Asia. Even today, the Obama administration has yet to come up with an effective riposte to China's playing cat and mouse with Japan - and chicken with the global economy. Sailing the Seventh Fleet around the western Pacific in search of tsunami and typhoon victims and dastardly pirates is not going to help Japan very much.

If Japan decides to seize control of its security destiny by turning its back on its pacifist constitution, staking out a position as an independent military power, and turning its full spectrum nuclear weapons capability into a declared nuclear arsenal - and South Korea nukes up in response - the famous pivot could turn into a death spiral for US credibility and influence in the region.

If this happens, 2012 will be remembered as the year it all began to unravel.

Burma Washes Its Hands of the Rohingyas

The piece reproduced below originally appeared at Asia Times Online on November 12, 2012 under the title Myanmar Fixates on Rohingya Calculation. Its thesis is perhaps better represented by the title of this blog post, Burma Washes Its Hands of the Rohingyas.  It can be re-posted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.  
 

ATOl has run some excellent stories on the Rohingya situation, including but not limited to Rohingya miss boat on development  by Syed Tashfin Chowdhury and Chris Stewart, and Nowhere to go for the Rohingya  by Phil Radford.

My ATOl piece tiptoes close to the TL:DR (too long didn’t read) danger zone since I wanted to go to considerable lengths to document the organized character of the anti-Rohingya pogrom and rebut the “ethnic strife” and “plague on both their houses” narrative that is being put out to Western audiences by almost every political and religious actor in Burma/Myanmar, up to and including Aung San Suu Kyi.

Anti-Rohingya racism has, to a certain extent, been ginned up by the military government; however, the government is building on a long-standing tradition of Buddhist/Burmese chauvinism—fueled in part by Burmese resentment at the Rohingyan role as an instrument of British political and economic penetration during the Raj times-- with communal violence between Rohingya and their local Rakhine/Arakan antagonists dating back to at least the 1930s.

The key factor in the current pogrom against the Rohingya appears to be the willingness of various key players in Burma, for a variety of sordid political and financial reasons described in the piece—a clutch of important votes in the national parliament and billions of dollars of expected revenue sharing to Rakhine state from its adjacent offshore natural gas fields-- to pander to the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party.

The RNDP controls Rakhine State (the home of the hapless Rohingya).  It has built its political fortune on Arakan chauvinism ( “Arakan” or “Rakhine” being alternative terms for the Buddhist but non-Burmese minority group on the shores of the Bay of Bengal) and its current campaign against the Rohingya may remind one of a ruthless and cynical campaign in the 1930s against a certain minority whose name begins with J by certain political party whose name began with N led by a certain guy whose name began with H in a certain European country whose name begins with G.  There!  Godwin’s Law safely evaded.

Arakans have also had a traditionally prickly relationship with the Burma nationality that dominates the Irrawaddy basin.  Arakan has a good case for calling itself the traditional Buddhist heartland of the region and is a reliable agitator for autonomy if not independence.  The historical Buddha allegedly paid a miraculous visit to  Arakan and personally breathed on a statue of himself cast at the order of the Arakan king, causing it to assume the Buddha’s physical form.  This priceless relic, the Mahamuni Buddha, was spirited away (actually sawn into pieces for convenient transport) by the Burmese to Mandalay in 1784 as war swag, where it was reassembled and resides to this day.  Every morning Buddhist faithful wash the statue’s face and brush its teeth.  The statue has been coated to a depth of 15 cm (6 inches) by donations of gold leaf.

 

Although the Arakans have to make do with a replica at the original temple site of Kyauktaw and probably harbor a grudge over the removal of their statue, it has not become a flashpoint for Arakan/Burmese conflict.  

Instead, the Mahamuni Buddha sparked  anti-Muslim riots in 1997, in an incident that looks like regime incitement to cover up a particularly egregious incident  of greed-driven Burmese junta sacrilege against the Arakanese artwork.  

I will outsource this story to the lengthy Wikipedia entry on Persecution of Muslims in Burma , written by an aggrieved Burmese Muslim.  Note that the ignition spark was provided by the alleged rape of a Buddhist girl by Muslims, just as the current violence in Rakhine State is traced to the alleged rape of a Buddhist girl by three men, two of whom were supposedly Rohingya :

The bronze Buddha statue in the Maha Myatmuni pagoda, originally from the Arakan, brought to Mandalay by King Bodawpaya in 1784 AD was renovated by the authorities. The Mahamyat Muni statue was broken open, leaving a gaping hole in the statue, and it was generally presumed that the regime was searching for the Padamya Myetshin, a legendary ruby that ensures victory in war to those who possess it.^[37]

On 16 March 1997 beginning at about 3:30 p.m., a mob of 1,000-1,500 Buddhist monks and others shouted anti-Muslim slogans.^{[citation needed]} They targeted the mosques first for attack, followed by Muslim shop-houses and transportation vehicles in the vicinity of mosques, damaging, destroying, looting, and trampling, burning religious books, committing acts of sacrilege. The area where the acts of damage, destruction, and lootings were committed was Kaingdan, Mandalay.^[38] The unrest in Mandalay began after reports of an attempted rape of a girl by Muslim men, although this was later disproved and led to speculation that the regime may have orchestrated the incident to deflect anger from the damaged statue. At least three people were killed and around 100 monks arrested.^[39]

In my piece I make a reference to "Burma's Buddhist Taliban" while comparing the remarkably similar trajectory of "fundamentalist" Theravada Buddhism in South Asia and the Taliban in Central Asia as expressions of chauvinist/nationalist/cultural/religious resistance to the challenge of British imperial assimiliation. As another passage from the Wikipedia entry indicates, the Taliban parallel is not just facile phrasemongering.  When challenged by Taliban Islamic extremism—in Afghanistan!—Burmese Buddhists, at least those egged on by the government, were keen to make sure they gave as good as they got in the destruction of heathen monuments department:

 

2001 Anti-Muslim Riots in Taungoo

In 2001,Myo Pyauk Hmar Soe Kyauk Sa Yar (or) The Fear of Losing One's Race and many other anti-Muslim pamphlets were widely distributed by monks. Many Muslims feel that this exacerbated the anti-Muslim feelings that had been provoked by the destruction in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.^[40] On May 15, 2001, anti-Muslim riots broke out in Taungoo, Pegu division, resulting in the deaths of about 200 Muslims, in the destruction of 11 mosques and the setting ablaze of over 400 houses. On May 15, the first day of the anti-Muslim uprisings, about 20 Muslims who were praying in the Han Tha mosque were killed and some were beaten to death by the pro-junta forces. On May 17, Lt. General Win Myint, Secretary No.3 of the SPDC and deputy Home and Religious minister, arrived in Taungoo and curfew was imposed there until July 12, 2001.^[41] Buddhist monks demanded that the ancient Hantha Mosque in Taungoo be destroyed in retaliation for the destruction in Bamiyan.^[42] On May 18, however, Han Tha mosque and Taungoo Railway station mosque were razed to the ground by bulldozers owned by the SPDC junta.^[43] The mosques in Taungoo remained closed as of May 2002. Muslims have been forced to worship in their homes. Local Muslim leaders complain that they are still harassed. After the violence, many local Muslims moved away from Taungoo to nearby towns and to as far away as Yangon. After two days of violence the military stepped in and the violence immediately ended.^[44]

Emphasis added.  To round out this post on outrages against various religious monuments, I hoped to include a picture of the Han Tha Mosque, but was unable to locate one.

A few points of interest. 

First, the two colossal Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan, one 55 meters tall and the other 38 meters tall, which the Taliban obliterated at great effort and expense amid international execration, were already missing their faces in 2001.  That particular act of vandalism was committed by Abdur Rahman Khan, the “Iron Amir” of Afghanistan during his campaign to subjugate the Hazara minority, whose homeland is around the town of Bamiyan, in the late 19^th century.  Abdur Rahman Khan’s job was to preserve Afghanistan’s role as an independent buffer state against Russia for his own benefit and for the sake of his British backers.  When the Hazara rebelled, he subdued them with supreme violence to prevent Britain from perceiving a dangerous power vacuum and intervening, and used his artillery to deface the statues.

The Hazara could be termed the Rohingya of Afghanistan.  They are Turkic, Persian-speaking Shi’ites whose name apparently derives from the Persian word for a force of 1,000 men, perhaps a reference to a Mongol military unit.  According to the study of the notoriously ubiquitous Central Asian "star cluster" Y chromosome identified with male line descendants of Genghis Khan, the population with the highest percentage of this gene (even higher than Mongolia and Inner Mongolia!) is the Hazara.  

 

The Hazara are treated as outcasts and face disenfranchisement and savage repression  from the Pashtun (both Abdur Rahman Khan in the 19^th century and the Taliban in the 20^th/21^st declared jihad on the Hazara).  It appears that whenever the Pashtun gain the upper hand in Bamiyan they took a knock at the Buddhist statues in order to advertise the subjugation of the Hazara, even though the Hazara are not Buddhists and the statues predate their arrival in central Afghanistan by several centuries.    

There is nothing to take a knock at now.  Only two hollow niches remain (though the destruction serendipitously revealed a treasure trove of Buddhist grottos hidden at the back of the statues) and UNESCO has decided it is impractical to try to rebuild the statues from the remaining rubble.  Ironically, I suppose, the largest statue represented Vairocano, the Buddha of Emptiness (the other was Buddha Sakyamuni).

Second, that hotbed of Theravada Buddhist fundamentalism, Sri Lanka, made considerable efforts to save the Bamiyan statues and subsequently to buy the rubble.  Sri Lanka then declared it would duplicate the destroyed statues in Sri Lanka. (Heroic efforts to preserve Buddhist relics are a hallmark of Theravada kingship and government legitimacy to this day, and Sri Lanka is no exception.  Another notable example is the king of Burma's attempt to rescue Ceylon's precious Buddha’s tooth from destruction by the Portugese Inquisition in Goa in 1561.)

Eventually, a one-third replica of the larger Bamiyan statue was erected in the coastal town of Peraliya in 2006, with Japanese financial support.  Instead of serving as an as a monument to Sri Lanka’s Theravada Buddhist assertiveness, it became a moving commemoration of the thousands of victims of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami who perished in Peraliya and the vicinity.  

Apparently in response to the destruction of the Bamiyan statues, China erected a 128-meter statue of Vairocana, now the largest statue in the world, in Henan Province.  The “pedestal” beneath the colossus in the photograph to the left is a four-story Buddhist monastery.

In China, a replica of the smaller Bamiyan statue of Sakyamuni Buddha is being carved into a mountainside near the monumental Buddha sculpture at Leshan. 

Somewhat unexpectedly, at least to the Western observer, it is possible to push the modern South Asian Buddhist’s hot buttons with invocations of “jihad” and “the Muslim threat to Buddhism” and, in Burma at least, this hot button is pushed with dismaying frequency.

 Unfortunately, recent events have shown that anti-Rohingya bigotry is far from a monopoly of what Westerners would term “anti-progressive and anti-democratic forces” a.k.a. the regime and its goons.  It happens to be part and parcel of deeply-felt Burmese Buddhism chauvinism, chauvinism that was supercharged by the challenge of British imperialism, is now directed against the People’s Republic of China, but may be redirected at a later date against Burma’s would be benefactors/exploiters in the West.

Photo credits:

Photo of devotees applying gold leaf to Mahamuni Buddha by mrolin 

Photo of Bamiyan Vairocano Buddha from phenomenalplace.com

Photo of empty Bamiyan niche from Smithsonian Magazine 

Photo of Peraliya Buddha by “Buddhika De Silva”        

Photo of China Vairocano Buddha from Wikipedia

From Asia Times

Myanmar Fixates on Rohingya Calculation
By Peter Lee

To outside observers, the carnage inflicted on the Rohingya minority - a five-month spasm of violence and de fact ethnic cleansing ostensibly stemming from the rape of a Buddhist woman by three Rohingya men - in Rakhine Province is indefensible and inexplicable.

What is even less understandable to Westerners is the virtually universal closing of ranks among local and national governments, pro and anti-government Buddhist monks, junta apologists and pro-democracy activists, President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi, all uniting to deny the apparently undeniable fact that an old fashioned pogrom is taking place against Rohingya minority and other Muslims.

Friends of Myanmar are puzzled and dismayed that the progressives they have championed have joined forces with the country's most reactionary forces to deny the overwhelming evidence that Rohingya - a dark-skinned Muslim ethnic minority with cultural and linguistic ties to neighboring Bangladesh - are being driven out of their homes by a campaign of intimidation, arson, and violence in 2012 that builds upon years of marginalization and demonization.

Seventy-five thousand Rohingya IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) have been herded into camps on the outskirts of the state capital, Sittwe, and other towns.

In a sign of how bad things are, thousands of Rohingya are trying to flee to Bangladesh, even though they are not welcome there and their only possible refuge if they aren't turned back are two squalid UN-run camps surrounded by a ring of miserable unsanctioned huts.

Exasperated by Myanmar denialism, Human Rights Watch published a satellite photo showing most of the Muslim quarter of a sizable town, Kyak Pyu, burned to the ground. [1]

(As is usual in these matters, nomenclature follows political inclination. The official government identifiers are Myanmar and Rakhine State. People disinclined to legitimize the regime's terms use Burma/Arakan).

The local Rakhine government and its dominant political party, the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, or RNDP, have been at the forefront of the anti-Rohingya campaign, according to Rohingya advocate Nay San Lwin.

Writing in Turkey's Today Zaman, he asserted:

The tragic cruelty and the carnage of Rohingyas that occurred in Sittwe, the capital of Arakan (now known as Rakhine) state, is assumed to have been caused by Dr Aye Maung, member of parliament and chairman of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) because in his interview with Venus News Journal on June 14, 2012, he said, "The Rakhine state should be established in the way Israel was initially established." That's the dream of the Rakhine people. They want to drive out Rohingya Muslims from the Rakhine (Arakan) state, their current leader Dr Aye Maung asserted in that interview.

In the last week of last month, a RNDP statement indicated, "Bengalis must be segregated and settled in separate, temporary places so that the Rakhines and Bengalis are not able to mix together in villages and towns in Rakhine state." "Repatriating non-citizen Bengalis to a third country in a short period of time must be discussed with the United Nations and the international community," the statement added. The RNDP also issued a statement early this year against a job announcement by CARE International in Myanmar, an NGO working in Arakan state, for using the term "Rohingya." [2]

Local Arakanese monks have been pitching in as well, according to Democratic Voice of Burma:

A group of Arakanese monks have called for Rohingya "sympathizers" to be targeted and exposed as "national traitors" while tensions again flare between Buddhists and Muslims in Burma's westernmost state.

In a document seen by DVB, the All-Arakanese Monks' Solidarity Conference have urged locals to distribute images of anyone alleged to be supporting the stateless minority group to all townships in the region, potentially opening them up to violent attacks by nationalist extremists. …
Many Arakanese monks have repeatedly called on local Buddhists to sever all relations with the Rohingya community, including trade and the provision of humanitarian aid. [3]

Another ugly message was delivered courtesy of some Rakhine Buddhist university students:

Hundreds of Buddhist university students in Sittwe in Rakhine State rallied on Wednesday against Rohingya Muslims as communal tension was at a heightened pitch in western Burma, according to news service reports.

More than 800 students joined a rally to call for an end to "studying with terrorist Bengalis" and for the removal of Muslim villages on the road to the university. [4]

In addition, the RNDP embarked on an active political and public relations campaign to reframe the pogrom as "sectarian clashes" in order to present its supporters - the rioters - as the injured party, especially if foreign diplomats show up to commiserate over the plight of the Rohingya.

In June, the Secretary General of the RNDP complained:

Q : We have knowledge that UN Secretary General's Special Advisor on Myanmar Mr. Vijay Nambiar visited the town of Sittwe through Buthidaung and Maungdaw Townships of Rakhine state and head back straight to Yangon. However, during his trip, he did not meet the representatives of ethnic Rakhine. What's your say on this?

A: I would so much like to talk about this issue. … We feel highly upset about Mr. Nambiar's failure to meet [Rakhine ethnic representatives] despite coming to Rakhine state. That makes us wonder about the stance of UN. There was no press conference either. And that is purely a totally unpleasant situation.

Therefore it makes us wonder the true motives of Mr. Nambia, is he being bias against those of ethnic Rakhine? So, by looking at this event, it's obvious that there are people who are pulling the strings from behind; otherwise, there is no reason for such a high ranking diplomat like him to dare not to call for a press conference. For an organization like UN, which is the de-facto representative of world's democratic societies, such a big failure is a heinous diplomatic mistake. [5]

When the Organization for Islamic Cooperation proposed setting up a humanitarian liaison office in the state capital of Sittwe, local "offended Buddhist" women marched through the streets of the state capital, wearing mass produced T-shirts and brandishing mass-produced banners. [6]

That's bad enough. But there was more. The national government of Thein Sein endorsed the position of the Rakhine State government and declared that the best deal for the Rohingya would be to herd them into UN camps for their own safety and then deport them to whatever third country would take them.

At the national level, the anti-Rohingya wave was not limited to the callous, knuckle-dragging authoritarians associated with the Myanmar military junta (now the pro-Western reformist regime in Nyapyidaw).

Buddhist monks and democracy activists piled on, excoriating the international community for daring to care about the Rohingya.

The leadership of the 8888 student democracy movement, while vigorously and commendably deploring the violence against the Rohingya, adamantly declared its disdain for the persecuted group:

Rohingya is not one of the ethnic groups of Myanmar at all. We see that the riot happening currently in Buthedaung and Maungdaw of Arakan State is because of the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh called "Rohingya" and mischievous provocation of some international communities. Therefore, such interfering efforts by some powerful nations on this issue (Rohingya issue), without fully understanding the ethnic groups and other situations of Burma, will be viewed as offending the sovereignty of our nation. Genetically, culturally and linguistically Rohingya is not absolutely related to any ethnicity in Myanmar … Taking advantage of our kindness and deference, if the powerful countries forced us to take responsibility for this issue, we will never accept it. Concerning with the sovereignty, if we are forced to yield by any country, we, the army and democratic force will deal the issue together as a national issue. [7]

From the Western liberal perspective, the worst was the studied disdain of Aung San Suu Kyi- whose official title in the Western press appears to be "democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi- for the plight of the Rohingya.

When pressed on the issue at Harvard University, she went Ice Queen, according to Global Post:

The forum at Harvard's Kennedy School Thursday evening was little shy of a lovefest …Until someone mentioned the "R" word.

Thanking Suu Kyi for "being our inspiration," a student from Thailand said: "You have been quite reluctant to speak up against the human-rights violations in Rakhine State against the Rohingya … Can you explain why you have been so reluctant?"

The mood in the room suddenly shifted. Suu Kyi's tone and expression changed. With an edge in her voice, she answered: "You must not forget that there have been human-rights violations on both sides of the communal divide. It's not a matter of condemning one community or the other. I condemn all human rights violations." [8]