The Myanmar Road vital to both Beijing and Yangoon<\/p>\n
China is helping renovate The Myanmar Road. And, as Pratap
\nChatterjee of Inter Press Service reports, Beijing may not only
\nhave trade in mind.<\/p>\n
KUNMING, China: Dozens of trucks laden with old-growth teak
\nrumble through the mountains of the Chinese province of Yunnan
\ndaily on their torturous 1,000 kilometer trip from the Myanmarese
\nborder to Kunming and back.<\/p>\n
This is The Myanmar Road, the famous World War II supply
\nlifeline for Chinese nationalist forces battling the advancing
\nJapanese. Today, instead of ammunition, it is Myanmarese teak
\nthat is being smuggled into China on this serpentine mountain
\nhighway.<\/p>\n
As the teak trucks wind their way through the Yunnanese
\nmountains, over the upper reaches of the Salween and Mekong
\nrivers, the pass crews of Chinese workers busy repairing and
\nexpanding the road form one to three lanes.<\/p>\n
Chinese crew are often inside Myanmar, helping to repair the
\nroad to Lashio, the nearest railhead that connects to Mandalay
\nand Yangon.<\/p>\n
The Chinese have a bilateral cooperation project with Myanmar
\nto improve this road, which is used by an estimated 200 trucks
\nevery day.<\/p>\n
Foreigners have lately become interested again in Myanmar,
\nwhich has been in trade and diplomatic isolation since 1988 after
\na bloody military suppression on pro-democracy activists.<\/p>\n
And when a similar crackdown took place a year later at
\nBeijing's Tiananmen Square, Myanmar's military junta sympathized
\nwith Chinese leaders. Sino-Myanmarese ties have never been
\nbetter.<\/p>\n
Last December, Chinese Premier Li Peng Made a three-day
\nofficial visit to Myanmar. In a joint communique at the end of
\nLi's trip, the Chinese leader and Myanmar's Lt. Gen. Than Shwe
\ndeclared that they would work together to establish a \"new
\ninternational political and economic order\".<\/p>\n
\"There is talk in Beijing of Myanmar becoming a land bridge
\nfor China to project its strategic interests in the Indian Ocean,
\n\"says a political analyst in Bangkok. Yangon has allowed the
\nChinese to set up military listening posts on islands near the
\nMalacca straits.<\/p>\n
The listening posts may be new but the trade route is not.
\nSome 2,500 years ago, The Myanmar Road was part of the South-West
\nSilk Route over which traders used to carry silk from the
\nChengdu, in China's Sichuan province, to South Asia.<\/p>\n
This was about 400 years before its more famous namesake, the
\nSilk Route from China to Central Asia.<\/p>\n
In the 1930s, Britain and the United States helped develop the
\nroad to supply Chinese nationalists who were fleeing the Japanese
\ninvasion of China. It fell into disuse after Myanmarese
\nindependence and when the military seized power in 1962, except
\nas route for Myanmarese communist dissidents.<\/p>\n
These days, official figures put border traffic between Yunnan
\nand Myanmar at US$360 million a year, but unofficial estimates
\npeg it a US$1.5 billion annually, after the more clandestine
\ntrade is added in.<\/p>\n
The teak is not the only commodity to make its way to China.<\/p>\n
\"My friends and I go back and forth regularly to Mandalay to
\nbring back gems to trade,\" says Farrakhan Ahmed, who has been
\nliving in Ruili, on the Chinese border, for two years.<\/p>\n
The booming Chinese economy is also ever hungry to receive
\nMyanmarese rice, while its drug addicts buy some 40 tons of pure
\nheroin from the jungle refineries in Myanmar every year.<\/p>\n
Under the cover of night, trucks carrying small arms and
\nrocket launchers sometimes slip over the border in the other
\ndirection, to supply the Myanmarese military regime in its war
\nagainst student rebels and indigenous minorities.<\/p>\n
Then there are the cheap Chinese goods from soap to bicycles
\nand televisions that are displayed in markets in Mandalay, the
\nnearest major city in Myanmar's north-east.<\/p>\n
For the Myanmarese, China is now the source of a sixth of its
\nimports. Some 44 percent of Yunnan's imports come from Myanmar.<\/p>\n
The push to develop southern trading routes was first
\nsuggested by Pan Qi, an ex-vice-minister of communications, in
\nthe Beijing Review in 1985. It was given a major boost by the
\nAsian Development Bank (ADB) at a meeting to promote regional
\nlinks in Manila in August 1993.<\/p>\n
The ADB believes US$15 billion need to be spent on developing
\n76 projects in order to unlock trade in the region. But this
\ntrade is heavily slanted toward promoting the might of China and
\nThailand, the region's two biggest economies.<\/p>\n
The bigger gainer, analysts say, is clearly Beijing. \"A new
\nstructure is gradually emerging which will be fruitful through
\ntrade and investment for China rather than those nations to her
\nsouth,\" wrote Ukrist Pathmanand, a guest columnist for the
\nBangkok Post, in January.<\/p>\n
Most of Yunnan's trade is currently handled by the Chinese
\nports of Canton and Fancheng, 2,000 km away to the east. The
\nVietnamese ports of Haiphong and Cai Lan started to take some of
\nthis trade, after China and Vietnam opened their borders two
\nyears ago.<\/p>\n
But while the Chinese and Vietnamese ports serve the Asian
\nmarkets of Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, they involve along
\noverland journeys. This is why the trade route with Myanmar has
\nbecome vital for China's future export growth.<\/p>\n
The route to the sea via Myanmar is 1,580 kilometers from
\nKunming. The Myanmarese military, with Beijing's military
\nbacking, has quelled insurgences along the route. In return, the
\nChinese get to move in quickly and quietly to develop their
\nsouthwards push.<\/p>\n
The new roads and the absence of armed resistance spell almost
\ncertain environmental doom for the forests of north-eastern
\nMyanmar. Today, those forests are still among the densest in the
\ncountry because of the lack of road access for loggers.<\/p>\n
Farther south in July 1993, the Myanmarese, with a Chinese
\ninterest-free loan, completed the US$ 300 million 2.9 kilometer
\nrail and road Syriam Bridge across the Pugu River in Yangon that
\nwill help serve the country's ports.<\/p>\n
Predicts an unpublished study for the Mekong secretariat, a
\nregional body that serves the countries of the lower Mekong:
\n\"Yunnan's trade surplus could flood the market of the `economic
\nquadrangle' (Myanmar, China, Laos and Thailand), provided that
\nadequate transport facilities are available.\"<\/p>\n
-- IPS<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/the-myanmar-road-vital-to-both-beijing-and-yangoon-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }