Myanmar and the Rohingya: in the shadow of Sino-Indian geopolitical competition

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the geopolitical factors that have been the catalyst for the Rohingya crisis, with special attention on the roles of China and India. It then situates those views through 20 in-depth interviews of informants from Bangladesh who are experts in South and Southeast Asian politics. Bangladesh has borne the brunt of accommodating the fleeing Rohingyas and is currently bearing the ensuing socio-economic costs. The research findings suggest that as a result of Chinese and Indian strategic interest in Myanmar and competition for regional dominance, the Rohingya have become the meat in the sandwich, and the ‘Rohingya crisis’ has been propelled into a status quo.

KEYWORDS:

• Geopolitics
• China
• India
• Myanmar
• Bangladesh
• Rohingya

Acknowledgements

The author is sincerely thankful to Dr Bert Jenkins, Dr Anthony Lynch and Professor Alan Scott of the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia, for their academic support to prepare this paper. The author also would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for further valuable suggestions. This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The military government changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989. The US and the UK did not recognize this change and refused to call it Myanmar. The US and UK believe that any change of a country’s name should be a decision made by its people, but the Burmese people do not accept the legitimacy of the unelected military regime to change the country’s official name. In this paper, the name Burma and Myanmar are used interchangeably.

2 European Union (EU) officially replaced the European Community (EC) in 1992.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Iqthyer Uddin Md Zahed

Iqthyer Uddin Md Zahed is a Doctoral Research Fellow of the School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences of the University of New England, NSW, Australia. His research interests are in the Rohingya crisis, conflict studies, geopolitics and Asian history and politics. He can be reached via [email protected] or [email protected]