China’s Balancing Behaviour Against the United States and the Special Importance of Myanmar
| Published date | 01 August 2020 |
| Date | 01 August 2020 |
| Author | Md Abdul Mannan |
| DOI | 10.1177/2347797020938985 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
China’s Balancing
Behaviour Against the
United States and the
Special Importance of
Myanmar
Md Abdul Mannan1
Abstract
As China rises, Sino–US competition for influence in East and Southeast Asia has
become inescapable. China’s growing influence on its south-western neighbour,
Myanmar, is a case in point. The impact of China’s rise is more strongly felt,
politically and economically, in Myanmar than elsewhere in the world. This
article asks the follow question: What explains China’s more aggressive political
and economic clout in Myanmar than elsewhere in the world? To answer this
question, this article argues that Myanmar holds a unique importance to China’s
balancing act against the preponderance of American power in a unipolar world.
Most of the available literature on China’s inroads into Myanmar focus on
China’s geopolitical and strategic interests. With such focus, existing literatures
take on Myanmar’s importance to China in terms of China’s politics of resource
extraction that meets the requirement of its overall economic development.
There is no denying it—resource extraction is important for China in order
to feed its expanding economy. But hardly any study frames Myanmar’s special
weight in China’s politics of resource extraction from the perspective of Beijing’s
balancing act against the United States (US). China’s balancing act is characterized
by an ‘economic prebalancing’ strategy. The strategy is rooted in China’s grand
strategy of acquiring ‘comprehensive national strength’, and more precisely, it is
embedded in Beijing’s ‘peaceful development’ strategy. The article asserts that
Myanmar is critically important in China’s economic prebalancing strategy against
the United States.
Keywords
Myanmar, China, United States, balancing, economic prebalancing, peaceful
development, Indian Ocean
1 Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Corresponding author:
Md Abdul Mannan, Professor, Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Dhaka, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh.
E-mails: amannan@du.ac.bd; mannanbh@gmail.com
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
7(2) 177–201, 2020
The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/2347797020938985
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Research Article
178 Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 7(2)
Introduction
This article looks into the way Myanmar weighs heavy to China from the
perspective of China’s balancing act against the predominance of the United
States (US) in a unipolar world. As China rises, Sino–US competition for influence
in East and Southeast Asia has become inescapable (Chan, 2012; Goh & Simon,
2008). China’s growing influence on its south-western neighbour, Myanmar/
Burma, is a case in point. As Myint-U (2016), a Myanmar specialist, suggests, the
impact of China’s rise is more strongly felt in Myanmar than elsewhere in the
world. Sino–Myanmar relations, in their own notes, is based on a kind of special
friendship which is phrased as ‘Pauk-Phaw’ (kinsfolk) friendship. It has become
instrumental for China to make deep inroads into Myanmar. The special friendship
dates back to 1949, as Myanmar was the world’s first non-socialist country to
recognize and establish ties with Communist China. Bilateral ties, however, went
through strains from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, resulting from China’s open
support for the armed struggle of the Burmese Communist Party (BCP).1
The friendship of Pauk-Phaw, which underpins the present state of bilateral
relations, began to resurface after Myanmar military junta seized power in 1988.
The event incurred stern sanctions by the West on Myanmar, forcing the junta to
seek Chinese protection (Huang, 2015; James, 2004). China, in response, gratified
immediately, as both countries officially opened border trade in 1988. China’s
firm political and diplomatic support for the junta was crucial to block any
US-sponsored sanctions by the United Nations (UN) against Myanmar under a
situation when Myanmar was isolated by the international community. Likewise,
China has firmly stood by the elected government of Myanmar over the Rohingya
crisis since August 2017. Beijing has blocked all UN resolutions against Myanmar
over the latter’s alleged genocide on its own nationals belonging to the ethnic
Rohingya community. Not too long ago, Myanmar attracted much international
interest after it had embarked on a democratic transition in the early 2010s. This
emboldened Myanmar to pursue a policy of hedging between China and the
United States. But a wide international disapproval of its violence against the
Rohingyas would soon force it to seek Chinese support, with China obliging in
the name of Pauk-Phaw friendship. Hand in hand with political–diplomatic
support, China has had a deep economic presence in Myanmar. Since the turn of
the twenty-first century, China’s rise has been in parallel with its huge investment
plans—in oil and gas, mining, port developments and other infrastructures in its
southwestern neighbour. China has now the largest share of foreign investment in
Myanmar, and it has alongside become Myanmar’s biggest trading partner.
This article asks the follow question: What explains China’s more aggressive
political and economic clout in Myanmar than elsewhere in the world? To answer
this question, this article argues that Myanmar holds a special/unique importance
to China’s balancing act against the preponderance of American power in a
unipolar world. Most of the available literature on China’s inroads into Myanmar
focus on China’s geopolitical and strategic interests. With such focus, the existing
literature’s take on Myanmar’s importance to China is in terms of China’s politics
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