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With its interests in flames, what will China do in Myanmar?
Over the weekend, protesters demanding the return of democracy in Myanmar burned down and looted Chinese-owned businesses in Yangon, the country's main city. China's embassy then asked the junta to restore order. In a few hours, the generals obliged: soldiers killed scores of demonstrators, and martial law was declared.
The anti-China riots add a fresh international dimension to Myanmar's political crisis. The protesters are angry not only at the military rulers, but increasingly at China's thinly veiled support for the junta. This backlash is a big test for Beijing. As a rising global power and regional heavyweight, is China going to simply look the other way as its interests in Myanmar literally go up in flames?
China's stakes in Myanmar. China has always been upfront on what it wants from its southern neighbor: a piece of its natural resources and waterways. Beijing wants the generals to restart long-shelved plans for a controversial hydropower dam to generate electricity for China, which locals fear will damage the environment and force thousands to relocate. Beijing is likewise hungry for Myanmar's rare earth metals (production has dropped significantly since the coup, which probably influenced Beijing's recent threat to stop exporting rare earths to the US.)
China also needs Myanmar to continue building a natural gas pipeline linking China's Yunnan province to the Kyaukpyu deepwater port in Myanmar's Rakhine state to gain access to the Indian Ocean, where China is competing for maritime supremacy with India.
Beijing in the hot seat. Since the February 1 coup, Chinese interests have come under fire in Myanmar. A lot of the buzz is on social media, which has been rife with rumors that China — the new regime's most prominent international ally — helped the military seize power. Pro-democracy activists also suspect Chinese cybersecurity experts are helping the junta develop internet censorship technology similar to China's own Great Firewall.
Despite its long history of shady activity in the country, China has dismissed such claims as fake news, and pushed back against protesters' calls to boycott Chinese products and sabotage the Kyaukpyu pipeline. But Beijing, as always, is worried about instability on its border, and frustrated with the generals' failure to end the post-coup unrest.
What will China do? China is in a bind on how to respond. On the one hand, it could just wait for the protests — and attacks on Chinese-owned businesses — to subside following a sustained bloody crackdown by the junta. That's precisely what China did following the 2014 and 2019 pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong, where Beijing now rules with an iron fist.
On the other hand, if the rising anti-China sentiment turns more violent, China could feel compelled to do something a bit more radical. Direct military intervention, however, would be anathema to China's longstanding policy of non-interference in domestic political affairs.
Non-interference vs Wolf Warrior. Right now, the Hong Kong scenario is more likely. One reason is that China is deeply concerned about its own reputation as a powerful yet benevolent Asian superpower, the main raison d'être behind its COVID vaccine diplomacy. The other is that China has no fond memories of the last time it deployed combat forces abroad. (That was in 1978, when China lost a brief war with Vietnam.)
But if Chinese businesses continue being singled out, Beijing will be wary of looking weak in the face of rising anti-China sentiment on its border. Further unrest could force Beijing's hand and unleash the "Wolf Warrior" — a new, more aggressive brand of Chinese diplomacy that draws it name from a blockbuster film depicting an extreme version of China using military muscle to defend national interests in Africa.
Myanmar military unlikely to back down; challenges for the new US ambassador to the UN
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week:
With protests growing, where does that leave the Myanmar coup?
Well, certainly no feeling on the part of the military that they need to back down under either domestic or international pressure. There's been relatively limited violence, thankfully so far. A few protesters have been killed. They've used tear gas, they've used water cannons, but much less of a crackdown than certainly they're capable of or that we've seen from the Myanmar military historically. That, of course, gives the protesters on the ground more incentive to think that they have success, and they can continue.
Around the world it's getting a lot of attention and certainly the Biden administration much more focused on human rights, dramatically more, especially Secretary of State Blinken than the Trump administration was. So, focus on additional sanctions, focus on more pressure, coordination with other countries, but not with the countries that matter the most to the Myanmar economy and that is China overwhelmingly. They've got a good relationship with the military and they've been very clear that publicly they are not on the side of the protesters. They just want calm, but they're not going to undermine this government. They're not going to level sanctions and that level of unwillingness to get involved, undercut the sovereignty of the Myanmar government, is something you'll see with all of the top countries that trade with Myanmar. It's Japan, it's Thailand, I mean across Southeast Asia that's all the same. So as a consequence, I think you could certainly continue to see significant demonstrations, but it's very hard to imagine anything that would upset this coup outcome and that means that the military remains in charge. I mean, even though you can imagine with a redo in elections, that they might try to reingratiate themselves with the West and offer a position, a compromise to Aung San Suu Kyi, as long as they perform better in unfair and unfree elections themselves, it's hard to imagine that she would accept that. So as a consequence, stability goes down, economic trajectory goes down, but the military government, at least for the time being, is here to stay.
What challenges are ahead for the new US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield?
She was just confirmed, sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris and, on the one hand, the Biden administration is vastly more interested in working with the United Nations and multilateral institutions and architecture than the Trump administration was. And that's particularly true on issues of climate, which has been the area of greatest success for the UN. It's the one that the secretary general, António Guterres, is most proud of and in that regard, this is going to be a very easy, very friendly relationship, even though she doesn't bring anywhere near the level of influence, either domestically in the US or globally, that Nikki Haley did when she was ambassador to the UN, or for that matter, Samantha Powers did or Madeline Albright did.
But having said that, the United Nations Security Council is a pretty broken institution. You've got countries with very different interests with permanent seats that have vetoes that can stop anything useful from happening, unless you have consensus. When you look around the world right now, there are very few issues that have consensus. You can get relatively watered-down statements condemning behaviors from various rogue states around the world and, indeed, most recently you got one on Myanmar, but the actual impact that those statements have is virtually zero. So, it's a useful place for the most powerful countries in the world to engage, to share information, and certainly you want experienced diplomats to be involved and appointed there and I think that Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is certainly that. But the idea that the United States is suddenly going to have more success in day-to-day workings in that group, that's certainly not the case. We're very, very far from that. There's no reform happening in the Security Council any time soon.
Are Putin and Lukashenko best friends now?
Well, they're a lot friendlier, right? I mean, you saw that President Lukashenko of Belarus accepted very happily an invitation from Russian President Putin to Sochi to go skiing, to share some drinks, to act in a convivial fashion in relatively informal clothing and spent hours together at a time when the United States and the Europeans are looking to increase sanctions against Russia because of the SolarWinds attack which hit the US, and NATO, and the UK, and the EU, and has been attributed to Russia, and also because of the jailing of Navalny, Alexei Navalny. Putin is very happy to show that he's continuing business as usual in his backyard and that means standing by Lukashenko, an incredibly repressive leader that continues to stay in power despite having stolen his most recent presidential elections. Demonstrations in Belarus have lost a lot of momentum though they still continue on the weekends. A lot of people have been jailed and, again, it's very clear that hard to keep enthusiasm when you see that the level of repressive control of the government and its security forces is complete, is a hundred percent and there are no defections to speak of.
We've seen this in Syria, we've seen it in Venezuela, we've seen it in Russia. We are seeing it in Myanmar, we're seeing it in Belarus. I mean, despite that we had the Colored Revolutions in the former Soviet Union with large numbers of people, massive demonstrations on the ground, that led to democratic overthrow of governments when those institutions were really on the way out. We saw a bit of that in the Arab Spring, but only successful in Tunisia. In Egypt successful briefly, but not fully, and then turned back and nowhere else in the region. And now with the exception of little Armenia that had a successful revolution and brought in a democratically supported prime minister, but also just lost a war with Azerbaijan, most of these popular movements are having a really hard time right now. And some of that is technology trends and surveillance and control. Some of that is lack of credibility of big democratic institutions, themselves, like the United States. Some of that is greater power of China and regional rogue states over and in their backyards, all of which means Putin and Lukashenko are looking stronger today than they have been in the past months.
Protests against Myanmar's military coup in Yangon.
A game of chicken in Myanmar
Defying a threat by the ruling generals to use lethal force to disperse them, anti-coup protesters again turned up across Myanmar on Monday to demand a return to democracy. The country's political crisis remains in flux since the military siezed power three weeks ago: a nationwide strike has ground the economy to a halt, while hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested, and at least four have been shot dead. But — to the surprise of many observers — the junta has yet to crack down as hard as it did against unruly students in 1988 and rebellious Buddhist monks in 2007.
It's a chicken-and-egg scenario: as the military shows more (unprecedented) restraint, its opponents feel emboldened to flock to the streets. Why is this happening, and what does it mean? Part of the answer lies in how Myanmar itself has changed over the past decade.
The people got a taste of democracy. Unlike in previous crises, most protesters are not calling for an abrupt end to a decades-long military regime but rather want Myanmar to go back to the pre-coup status quo on January 31 — especially young people.
Myanmar has one of the youngest populations in Southeast Asia, with a median age of 28.2, and five million voted for the first time in the November election. For the youth, democracy is not a nice-to-have but the only possible system, as well as the only one they know.
Like their peers calling out the decaying military-royal stranglehold on power in neighboring Thailand, young people in Myanmar are unwilling to wait for the junta to deliver on its promise of holding a fresh election in a year. They are angry at the generals for taking away their basic freedoms, and are not as afraid as their parents of the junta's goons because most have only faint memories of iron-fisted military rule.
The junta can't party like it's 1988 (or 2007). When the military crushed the last two major uprisings, it did so under the cover of news blackouts. That's impossible in 2021 because of the World Wide Web, which pre-democratic Myanmar was barely connected to.
Short of taking the entire country offline, the generals have so far imposed a nighttime "internet curfew" and blocked access to social media. However, tech-savvy protesters have been able to circumvent these restrictions, allowing them to continue to mobilize on the streets and broadcast their actions. A brutal repression of the protests would likely be live-streamed on Facebook, a nightmare scenario for the junta.
The military's decision to block Facebook is arguably the most unpopular thing the junta has done since it seized power in a country where for about half the population, the platform "is the internet" and the preferred way to communicate with others. Facebook has responded by unfriending the generals, who risk even more public discontent if the ban continues much longer.
The economy loves freedom. When Myanmar started embracing democracy in the 2010s, it also opened up the economy to foreign investment and, more importantly, to the private sector. A nationwide strike would have been unheard of just ten years ago, when most businesses were directly or indirectly controlled by the state.
Now, private sector employees cannot be forced to go to work by the state, nor risk getting fired for attending an anti-government rally. If the protests continue, striking workers could do severe damage to an economy that was already struggling before the coup due to COVID.
Moreover, prolonged economic disruption will sooner or later hit the junta where it hurts the most — its pocket. In 2011, the military used an opaque privatization law to acquire hundreds of thousands of former state-run enterprises in key sectors like beer, tobacco, mining, tourism, real estate, and telecommunications. If the economy feels more pain, the generals will be imperiling their own business empire.
What happens next? Whether Myanmar's post-coup crisis will be resolved peacefully or not remains to be seen, but it's clear that the generals overplayed their hand. The country has changed — and they missed it.What We're Watching: Myanmar protests test the generals, Haiti's political chaos, Netanyahu in the dock
Myanmar protests test junta's patience: It didn't take long for the Myanmar military junta to get an earful from the streets. Since staging a coup last week, in which they detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, they have been met with a growing protest movement in the capital, Naypyidaw, and other cities across the country. Flying the flag of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party and carrying images of Lord Buddha, the protesters say they are demanding an end to "dictatorship." The generals, for their part, have so far showed restraint, deploying water cannons against the protesters this time, rather than shooting them dead, as they ended up doing in 1988 and again in 2007. But the military has warned ominously that it won't tolerate actions that undermine "state stability, public safety, and the rule of law." With the world watching, will the generals change tack and crush the protests after all — in the end, who's to stop them?
Haiti's term limit turmoil: Haiti's embattled President Jovenel Moïse said Sunday that his government had arrested more than 20 people whom he accused of plotting to overthrow his government. For months, Haiti has been wracked by deepening political turmoil and violence over what should be a simple question: when does the president's term end? Moïse's opponents say that his five-year term was due to expire on Sunday, and they've called for a two-year transition government. But the president argues that because an interim government ran the country during the first year of his term, he actually has until February 2022 to lead. Top justices in Haiti as well as human rights advocates have sided with the opposition, but the Biden administration, as well as the Organization for American States and the United Nations, are all in Moïse's corner, for now. With no obvious way out of the deadlock at the moment, Haiti — the Western Hemisphere's poorest country — is on the brink of a potentially disastrous explosion of political violence.
Israel's Netanyahu in the dock: Just six weeks out from Israel's fourth general elections in the past two years, Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is back in court facing a host of corruption charges. Bibi, Israel's longest serving PM, has pleaded not-guilty to charges that he directed favorable government policy towards prominent media and business figures in exchange for gifts and positive media coverage. Bibi says the whole thing is a political "witch hunt," but if convicted, the forever-leader could face several years behind bars. A verdict is not expected to be handed down for months — or even years (Netanyahu's camp has already called for further delays to the proceedings until after the March 23 election) -- but the political impact of the case so close to the polls is worth watching. The March vote will largely be a referendum on Bibi, but will negative fallout from the trial really hurt him? Or is it the case that, as some observers say, most Israelis decided long ago whether they are "for or against Bibi"?