Elsewhere in Burma, people are also complaining about how China treats their country. For more than 20 years, Chinese companies have stripped large swathes of the north of trees, denuding ecologically crucial watershed areas. Chinese merchants have also flooded Burma with cheap consumer goods and fake medicines, explains a local businessman in Rangoon. "China does produce goods of good quality, but only for export to the West," he said. "Here, they sell only junk. This is an almost racial attitude towards us."
Even within the ruling military, anti-Chinese feelings run high. Already in 2004, a document was compiled by Lieutenant Colonel Aung Kyaw Hla, a researcher at Burma's Defence Services Academy located in Pyin Oo Lwin, an old hill station in the highlands northeast of Mandalay.
The 346-page top-secret, thesis, titled "A Study of Myanmar [Burma]-U.S. Relations," outlines in Burmese the policies now being implemented to improve relations with Washington and lessen dependence on Beijing. The establishment of a more acceptable regime than the old junta after the November 2010 election has made it easier for the Burmese military to launch new policies and have those taken seriously by the international community.
The thesis bluntly states that having China as a diplomatic ally and economic patron has created a "national emergency" that threatens the country's independence. Aung Kyaw Hla, probably a committee of army strategists rather than a single person, goes on to argue that although human rights are a concern in the West, the US would be willing to modify its policy to suit "strategic interests." Although the author does not specify those interests, the thesis makes it clear that includes common ground with the US vis-à-vis China. The author cites Vietnam and Indonesia under former dictator Suharto as examples of US foreign-policy flexibility in weighing strategic interests against democratization.
If bilateral relations with the US were improved, the master plan suggests, Burma would also gain access to badly needed funds from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions. The country would then emerge from "regionalism," where it currently depends on the goodwill and trade of immediate neighbors, including China, and "enter a new era of globalization."
At the same time, China is clearly taking the new signals from Burma seriously. In February and March this year, the Beijing-based, Chinese-language weekly Economic Observer ran a series of articles about the suspension of the Myitsone dam trying to analyze what went wrong with China's relations with Burma. "How could something like this happen?" columnist Qin Hui asked. The 14 October Global Times, a daily tabloid published under the auspices of The People's Daily newspaper, said in a commentary that Chinese companies need to "attach more importance to grassroot voices" in carrying out investment projects such as the Monywa copper mine. According to Burmese journalists, reporters from The Global Times are calling them with questions about pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, which never happened before.
It's too early to say whether Myitsone, and now Monywa, will become a turning point in China's relations with Southeast Asia, paving the way for a more tactful relationship with countries such as Burma. But popular struggles against two Chinese megaprojects here have no doubt been wake-up calls for the leaders in Beijing. Even smaller countries - and a movement led by two former vegetable vendors in a town in the Burmese outback - are now brave enough to challenge the region's most powerful economic and political player.
