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ABSTRACT
China’s contemporary cross-border investments in northern Myanmar have been confronted by, and in turn have re-animated, the region’s post-Cold War geographies and associated illicit drug economy. Since the mid-2000s, mainland Chinese companies have invested in large-scale agribusiness concessions in northern Myanmar under China’s liberalized opium substitution programme. Chinese companies have partnered with local armed ‘strongmen’ – many of whom were or still are involved in the illicit drug trade – where they exercise armed authority within a wider landscape of ‘armed sovereignties’. Field case study data demonstrate how China’s contemporary cross-border investments have extended Myanmar’s national political authority within the arc of armed sovereignties. Chinese-backed agricultural estates, whether awarded to paramilitary militias or rebel leaders under ceasefires, acted as state territorial interventions and led to incremental Myanmar state-building outcomes. The state-building effects from contemporary Chinese investments are in contrast to the Cold War period in which China sought to destabilize non-aligned nation-states by supporting armed communist revolutions. The study traces how China’s current land-based investments have reawakened the borderland’s legacy of political violence and reconfigured armed sovereignties closer towards Myanmar’s military state.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author foremost thanks the many anonymous informants and research assistants over the years who made this research topic possible to study, despite all the obstacles. So many Kachin community leaders gave their time again and again to explain the historical backdrop and the currents of political patronage that helped to situate these land dynamics. In special memory to my first Kachin field researcher on this project, who passed away when very young from an unrelated health problem not long after he helped me get my boots muddy.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Interview in Chiang Mai, Thailand, July 2010.
2 In the sense that the strongmen in northern Myanmar emerged out of the structuration of the military state, John Sidel’s (Citation1999) conceptualization of strongmen in the Philippines – or bossism – more accurately captures the strongmen of northern Myanmar rather than Joel Midgal’s ‘strongmen’ (Midgal, Citation1988). On examples of types of ‘gangsters’ in Southeast Asia, see Trocki (Citation1998).
3 ‘Crony companies’, as they are often called in Myanmar, are military-backed companies that emerged in the early 1990s as effectively the private domestic arm of the military.
4 For a case on the Indonesian frontier, see Eilenberg (Citation2014).
5 Burmans (Bama or Bamar in Burmese) represent the country’s ethnic majority, and are the ethnicity associated with the military and state.
6 The Myanmar military government has routinely touted the phrase ‘development for peace’ to convince ethnic armed groups and civilians to work with the state to bring prosperity to their war-torn communities. In practice, this has amounted to large-scale hydropower dams, extensive logging and mining, land grabs, and militarization (Woods, Citation2011a).
7 Although since many of the rebel groups were staunchly Christian and predominately anti-communist organizations made the temporary coalition a matter of political and financial convenience.
8 The military initiated the Ka Kwe Ye (KKY) programme (literally, ‘people’s defence’) in 1963 just after General Ne Win’s military coup, and later the Pyithusit (‘people’s militia’) less than a decade later (Buchanan, Citation2016).
9 His company, Asia World (and then run by his son, the late Steven Law), is one of Myanmar’s most prominent enterprises involved in construction, logging, mining and hydropower, especially in northern Myanmar.
10 This included favourable Chinese bank loans, lowered bureaucratic hurdles for investment and, most importantly, state-provided quotas for tax-free agricultural crop imports.
11 In contrast, the same Chinese-backed agricultural outreach programme in northern Laos was spearheaded by smallholder production schemes (Shi, Citation2008), giving further evidence about how the political terrain shapes production modes and outcomes.
12 These outcomes are similar to the counterinsurgent strategies deployed by Southeast Asian governments during the Cold War, where smallholders became the spearhead of the state in communist frontier zones (De Koninck, Citation2006).
13 I have documented one such case where a former regional military commander was elected into office in a Kachin state township following an influx of Burman migrants to work goldmines and an agribusiness concession.
14 This is the case even more so since active fighting against the KIA has resumed since 2011.
15 The widely held perception among Shan state residents, and indeed most Burmese in the whole of Myanmar, is that Kokang are directly or indirectly involved in the narcotics business, including even those who are not part of a militia, as repeatedly told to me in interviews.
16 U Myin Lwin ran in the national elections on the military’s political party (USDP) for Kutkai township in northern Shan state where he is very popular with Chinese residents. However, he lost nonetheless to a non-Chinese USDP candidate.
17 The KIO-controlled territory mostly outside the valleys and infrastructure routes as lowland areas mostly came under military state control after their ceasefire.
18 The maps are on file with the author.