BEIJING — China is Myanmar’s closest ally — almost its only one. It is Myanmar’s chief defender in international forums, its major weapons supplier, its largest foreign investor and a crucial backer of its ruling military junta.
But in the wake of a recent clash between Myanmar’s army and ethnic rebels, a rout that sent thousands of people streaming over the mountainous border into China, analysts have begun to question how much influence China has.
The answer may determine whether that brief battle grows into a much bigger and deadlier war.
Although it tried, analysts, journalists and other experts say, China was unable to dissuade Myanmar’s junta last month from sending thousands of troops into the nation’s northern Kokang region, where they easily routed about 1,500 armed rebels. The rebels had observed a cease-fire with Myanmar’s government for nearly 20 years.
Now news reports say that the junta has sent 7,000 troops and 20 tanks into a neighboring region known as Wa State, where a much larger rebel force, the United Wa State Army, has been observing the same cease-fire. The Wa forces, at least 20,000 strong and heavily armed, promise a fight if attacked.
“We want peace, but we are not going to lay down our weapons and surrender,” a rebel spokesman who called himself Su said by telephone on Thursday. “We will not become the second Kokang.”
The recent fighting is the result of demands by the junta that the rebels disarm and join a government-run border patrol. The ultimatum is widely seen as an effort by the military rulers to defang their opponents in advance of an election next year that they are billing as the first democratic vote in more than 20 years.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that Myanmar, long called Burma, had “promised to restore peace and stability along the border,” and some local news reports suggest that the confrontation in Wa State may yet be defused. But there are also signs that China and Myanmar, so close for two decades, are having differences.
“I’ve spoken to Chinese Foreign Ministry people, and they’re very concerned about this hostile attitude Burma has,” said Aung Zaw, a Burmese exile who is editor of The Irrawaddy, a magazine based in Thailand. “China has given them political and diplomatic support. But when Burma wants to put a stop to its own internal matters, they don’t care about anybody else.”
That view is echoed by a number of Beijing-based political analysts and scholars, some of whom have worried publicly that China may not have enough clout to ward off a larger war that could send many more refugees pouring into China. “They don’t always heed China’s advice,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “China has so little leverage against them because China, in some sense, depends on them.”
For decades, Myanmar has traded access to its ample natural resources and to the Indian Ocean for political support from China. This month, Chinese companies are set to start construction of a $2.5 billion oil-and-natural-gas pipeline project that would run from the ocean to Kunming, the capital of China’s neighboring province, Yunnan.
But China’s relations with Myanmar are not so straightforward. In an earlier era, the Chinese gave money and arms to ethnic groups, including the Wa and Kokang rebels, on Myanmar’s side of the border that were allied with the Burmese Communist Party. Factionalism sank the party in the 1980s, and in 1989 Myanmar’s government struck a cease-fire with the ethnic groups that has lasted until now.
While staying close to the military junta, the Chinese have also kept in close touch with the ethnic groups, leaving the border open for trade, family visits and no small amount of smuggling of arms and other contraband.
As early as June, said one Beijing analyst, the Chinese government told a ranking official in Myanmar’s government during a visit to Beijing that it wanted to avoid conflict on the border. The warning was repeated in July, when a team of officials from Myanmar traveled to Kunming to meet with Yunnan provincial leaders, according to the analyst, who refused to be identified for fear of retaliation from the Chinese government.
But some experts say they believe that the junta was nettled by China’s tacit support for the ethnic groups, many of whom are ethnic Chinese, and its refusal to close the border and cut off the groups’ economic lifeline. Other experts say the junta’s internal political calculations, geared toward a sweeping victory in the 2010 elections, trumped any diplomatic concerns.
When battles broke out in Kokang, the Chinese government reacted with unusual force, issuing a statement asking the junta to restore “regional stability.” Unconfirmed new reports suggest that a senior Chinese military official traveled to Myanmar early this week to assess the situation, and that a delegation of five officials from Myanmar traveled Monday to Kunming to meet with unidentified Chinese officials.
It is unclear whether China’s forcefulness will cause the junta to stand down. But some believe Myanmar’s government sent its own signal in this week’s edition of The Myanmar Times, a newspaper that, like all the press there, reflects the leaders’ thinking. The paper carried an article recording a visit to Taiwan by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader whom Beijing accuses of trying to foment rebellion against the Chinese government.
The Asia Times, which first reported on the article, said it was the first time in at least 20 years that the Dalai Lama’s name had appeared in Myanmar’s press.
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